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'Veit Stoss' () (ca. 1445-1450 in Horb am Neckar - 20 September 1533 in Nuremberg) was one of the most important sculptors of the late Gothic period.
After moving a period, in 1473 he came to Nuremberg where married Barbara Hertz. Also, his eldest son Andreas was born here. In 1477 he renounced his Nuremberg citizenship and went to Kraków, where he stayed until 1496. During the Kraków period he carved the magnificent polychrome wooden Altar of Veit Stoss in St Mary's Church. It was the largest altar of this time. Another important work of this period is the tomb of Polish king Casimir IV the Jagiellonian in the Wawel Cathedral.
In 1496, he went back to Nuremberg with his wife and eight children. There he acquired the citizenship for three guldens and started to work on wood carved altars, groups and single figures. In particular, between 1500 - 1503 he carved the Assumption of Mary altar for the parish church in Schwaz, Tirol. In 1503, he copied the seal and signature of a fraudulent contractor and was sentenced to be branded on his both cheeks and not allowed to leave Nuremberg without an explicit permission of the city council. (Another account of this incident, by Lawrence Weschler at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/books/everythingthatrises.contest21.html,
states "Actually, what happened was that the Nuremberg master was sentenced to death, with his sentence commuted at the last moment, owing to the irreplaceable splendor of his craft, though the hangman did go ahead and stick a red-hot poker through his opened mouth from one side of his face to the other, leaving the paired cheek-gash scars by which he would come to be identified for the rest of his life.")
In spite of the prohibition, in 1504 he went to Münnerstadt to paint the altar of Tilman Riemenschneider. He also created the altar in the Bamberg Cathedral and various other sculptures in Nuremberg, including the ''Annunciation'' and ''Tobias and the Angel''. In 1506 he was arrested again. Emperor Maximilian wrote a grace letter, but it was rejected by the council of the Imperial free city (''freien Reichsstadt'') as interference into its internal affairs.
Veit Stoss was buried at Johannis cemetery, No. 268 ().
In St. John Cantius, Chicago, IL, there is a 1/3rd scale replica of the St. Mary's Church Altar.

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References

External links

References

★ ''The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany'', Michael Baxandall, 1980

★ [1]

External links

★ Gallery of Works

★ Catholic Encyclopedia: Veit Stoss

★ The Veit Stoss altar replica at St. John Cantius, Chicago, USA