Veit Stoss

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The Archangel Raphael, wood sculpture by Veit Stoss, 1516 – 18; … (credit: Courtesy of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nurnberg, Ger.)

(born 1438/47, Swabia — died 1533, Nürnberg) German sculptor and wood carver. He worked mainly in Poland from 1477 to 1496; among his principal works is the majestic high altar in the Church of the Virgin Mary in Kraków (1477 – 89). After his return to Germany, he settled in Nürnberg and produced important wood and stone sculptures in churches there and in Bamberg. His nervous, angular forms, realistic detail, and virtuoso wood carving synthesized the sculptural styles of Flemish and Danubian art, and he exercised great influence on German late Gothic sculpture.

For more information on Veit Stoss, visit Britannica.com.

(b Horb am Neckar, c. 1445-50; d Nuremberg, c. 20 Sept 1533). German sculptor, engraver and painter. He is one of the best-documented and most significant German limewood sculptors of his time. Stoss developed a uniquely expressive and personal style in this material, while also achieving considerable success working in other woods and stone. It is likely that he came from an artistic family as he had at least one brother, Matthias Stoss (b Horb, 1482; d Krak?w, 1540), who was a goldsmith, and six of his sons also worked as artists: Florian Stoss (c. 1480/85-c. 1543) was a goldsmith working in G?rlitz; Stanislas Stoss (d Krak?w, 1527-8), Veit Stoss the younger (b Nuremberg; d Kronstadt, before 1531) and Willibald Stoss (d Schweinfurt, 1573) were sculptors; Johannes Stoss earned his living as a painter and sculptor in Sch?ssburg, while Martin Stoss ( fl 1531-41) was a Krak?w goldsmith.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The German sculptor Veit Stoss (ca. 1445-1533) perfected the expressive late Gothic style in his early masterpiece, the high altar of the Virgin Mary in Cracow, Poland. His late sculpture shows his mastery of a new, abstract, Renaissance-inspired art.

Born either in Swabia or Nuremberg, Veit Stoss worked in Cracow, Poland, between 1477 and 1496, when he became a citizen of Nuremberg. In 1503 he falsified papers and was condemned to death. He was reprieved but branded on the cheeks with hot irons. He nevertheless continued to work in Nuremberg until his death.

Stoss's most impressive and important work is the high altar (1477-1486) of the parish church of the Virgin Mary in Cracow. It is an elaborate polychromed wood structure, with two sets of wings which depict in relief sculpture the life of the Virgin and of Christ. In the center is the Death of Mary in the presence of the Apostles. In the openwork Gothic superstructure Christ ascends into heaven with her soul, and at the top of the altarpiece Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven by the Trinity. The entire altarpiece is a blaze of gold and strong colors, especially blue, and the excitement continues in the style of the carving. Drapery folds, deeply undercut, break crisply and swirl about, forming animated patterns in light and shade. The altarpiece is a technical tour de force that overwhelms the beholder.

The first accredited works by Stoss after his return to Nuremberg are the three stone reliefs (1499) of the Passion in the choir of St. Sebald. They are of remarkable formal concentration and enormous power, as is the wooden crucifix from the same period and church (now on the high altar of the church of St. Lorenz).

High above this altar in St. Lorenz, suspended in midair, is Stoss's famous Great Rosary, or Salve Regina (1517-1518). A wooden chaplet of carved roses and medallions representing the Seven Joys of Mary surround the life-size figures of Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin. The style is crisp and somewhat nervous in this very dramatic conception, which honors the Cult of the Rosary, promulgated in the late 15th century by the Dominicans.

There is just a hint of calm and relaxation, as well as a breath of the new spirit of the Renaissance, in the masterpiece of Stoss's late style, the Adoration of the Shepherds altarpiece (1520-1523), carved for a church in Bamberg (now in the Cathedral). The wood was purposely left un-colored, in the new Renaissance feeling for the medium that Stoss's contemporary Tilman Riemenschneider shared.

Stoss's genius was so strong that it was apparently impossible for forceful individuals to develop in his school in Nuremberg.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Stoss in English. Theodore Müller, Sculpture in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Spain, 1400-1500 (trans. 1966), has excellent biographical and critical material on Stoss. Recommended for background are Charles Louis Kuhn, German and Netherlandish Sculpture, 1280-1800 (1965), and Hanspeter Landolt, German Painting: The Late Middle Ages, 1350-1500 (trans. 1968).

Annunciation (1517-1518) in the Lorenzkirche, Nuremberg

Veit Stoss Altar, St. Mary's Church, Kraków.

Veit Stoss (Polish: Wit Stwosz; before 1450 - about 20 September 1533) was a leading German sculptor, mostly in wood, whose career covered the transition between the late Gothic and the Northern Renaissance. His style emphasized pathos and emotion, helped by his virtuoso carving of billowing drapery; it has been called "late Gothic Baroque".^[1] He had a large workshop and in addition to his own works there are a number by pupils.

Contents 1 Life 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links 4.1 Sister project links

Life

Stoss was born at Horb am Neckar before 1450; his exact date of birth is unknown though it may have been in 1447. Nothing is known certainly of his life before 1473 when he moved to Nuremberg in Franconia and married Barbara Hertz. Their eldest son Andreas was born there before 1477, when he renounced his citizenship of Nuremberg and moved to Krakow, the royal capital of Poland, at the invitation of the German merchant community, who commissioned him to produce the enormous polychrome wooden Altar of Veit Stoss at St Mary's Church in Krakow. This was not completed until 1489, and was the largest tryptich of its time and, like his other large works, required a large workshop including specialized painters and gilders.^[2] Other important works from his period in Poland were the tomb of Casimir IV in Wawel Cathedral, the marble tomb of Zbigniew Olesnicki in Gniezno, and the altar of Saint Stanislaus. The Polish court was more aware of Italian styles than Nuremberg patrons of that period, and some of his Polish work uses Renaissance classical ornament.

In 1496, he returned to Nuremberg with his wife and eight children. He reacquired his citizenship for three gulden and resumed his work there as a sculptor. Between 1500 and 1503 he carved an altar, now lost, for the parish church of Schwaz, Tyrol of the "Assumption of Mary." In 1503, he was arrested for forging the seal and signature of a fraudulent contractor and was sentenced to be branded on both of his cheeks and prohibited from leaving Nuremberg without the explicit permission of the city council.

Despite the prohibition he went to Münnerstadt in 1504, to paint and gild the altarpiece that Tilman Riemenschneider had left in plain wood ten years earlier, presumably according to his contract - unlike Stoss, his workshop did not include painters and guilders. Leaving wood sculpture unpainted was a new taste at the time, and "perhaps the tastes of the city council were somewhat provincial."^[3] He also created the altar for Bamberg Cathedral and various other sculptures in Nuremberg, including the Annunciation and Tobias and the Angel. In 1506 he was arrested a second time. Emperor Maximilian wrote a letter of pardon, but it was rejected by the council of the Imperial free city Nuremberg as meddling in its internal affairs. He was able to resettle in Nuremberg from 1506, but was shunned by the council and received few large commissions from that time onwards.^[4] In 1512, the Emperor asked Stoss to help with the planning of his tomb monument, which was eventually placed in the Hofkirche, Innsbruck; it seems Stoss's attempts to cast in brass were unsuccessful.

During the period 1515-1520, Veit Stoss received a commission for sculptures by Raphael Torrigiani, a rich Florentine merchant. In 1516 he made Tobias and the Angel (now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg), and a statue of Saint Roch for the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. This wooden statue represents the saint in a traditional way: in the garb of a pilgrim, lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore in his thigh. Even Giorgio Vasari, who did not think much of artists north of the Alps, praised it in his Le Vite and called it "a miracle in wood", though misattributing it.^[5]

Veit Stoss was buried at St. Johannis cemetery in Nuremberg.

Altarpiece for Schwabach (1506), middle panel with the Coronation of the Virgin.

Notes

1. ^ Snyder, 309
2. ^ Snyder, 308-309
3. ^ Snyder, 305
4. ^ Snyder, 309
5. ^ Baxandall, Michael (1980). The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. Yale University Press. 

References

• Baxandall, Michael (1980). The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. Yale University Press. 
• Schultz, Ellen (ed). Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg, 1986, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 9780870994661
• Snyder, James; Northern Renaissance Art, 1985, Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0136235964

in German

• Kirchenlexikon (German)
• R. Kahnsitz, ed (1983) (in German). Veit Stoss in Nürnberg. Werke des Meisters und seiner Schule in Nürnberg und Umgebung. Munich. 
• Kepinski, Zdzislaw (1981) (in German). Veit Stoss. Verlag der Kunst. ISBN 8322101384. 
• Skubiszewski, Piotr (1978) (in German). Der Stil des Veit Stoss. 41. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. pp. 93-133. 

External links

• Gallery of Works
• The Veit Stoss altar replica at St. John Cantius, Chicago, USA

Sister project links

• Media related to Veit Stoss at Wikimedia Commons
•  "Veit Stoss". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Veit_Stoss. 
•  "Stoss, Veit". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 

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