Stoss, Veit

Stoss, Veit (b ?Horb am Neckar, Swabia, c.1450; d Nuremberg, Sept. 1533). German sculptor, with Riemenschneider the greatest woodcarver of his age (he also worked in stone). He is first recorded in 1477, when he moved from Nuremberg to Cracow in Poland. There he carved his largest work, the huge altarpiece for St Mary's church (1477–89), and also made the red marble tomb of King Casimir IV in the cathedral (1492). In 1496 he returned to Nuremberg, where he continued to prosper. However, in 1503 his career was blighted when he forged a document in an attempt to recoup some money he regarded as having been misappropriated in an investment—an offence for which he was tried, convicted, and branded through both cheeks. He was also confined to the city limits of Nuremberg (he fled but returned), and although he was to some extent rehabilitated, he never regained his former position. He died a wealthy man, but his old age was embittered by disputes with the city authorities.

A good many documented and signed works by Stoss survive and his style is distinctive—bold and powerfully characterized, with exaggerated gestures and expressions and draperies rendered in an ornate, almost calligraphic manner. Indeed, Stoss's work is so individual that the famous figure of St Roch (c.1510–20) in SS. Annuziata, Florence, is almost universally accepted as his (see Voss), even though it is undocumented and was attributed by Vasari to ‘Janni Francese’ (Janni the Frenchman; see Juan de Juni). Vasari wrote eloquently of the virtuosity of the carving, describing the draperies as ‘cut almost to the thinness of paper, and with a beautiful flow in the arrangement of the folds, so that nothing more wonderful is to be seen’. Stoss sometimes, as here, left his figures unpainted, but otherwise his work is entirely in the late Gothic spirit. He is recorded as being a painter and engraver as well as a sculptor and he also declared himself competent as a civil engineer. See also limewood.