STOSS, stns, VEIT (e.1440-1533). A celebrated German sculptor and engraver, the chief master of in Germany. Beyond the fact that Nuremberg was his birthplace, nothing cer tain is known of his parentage. his youth and apprenticeship. but very probably he was reared in the school of Michel Wohlgemuth. The first definite mention of him dates from 1477, when he removed to Cracow. where he was held in great esteem and whence lie returned in 1496, a well-to-do man, since in 1499 he bought a stately mansion at Nuremberg and made other invest ments besides. As to his subsequent life, we are informed that he caused much distress to the honorable council of Nuremberg, involved the city in litigation, and forged an obligatory bill, a crime which was then punishable by death. The council, however, by a special act of mercy, commuted the sentence to having him branded (1503), both his cheeks being pierced with a hot iron by the executioner. For breaking his oath not to leave the city, he subsequently had to suffer imprisonment, and in 1533 died, it is said, totally blind, at the age of ninety-three. This restless and graceless citizen, this forger and perjurer was nevertheless an artist of the most tender and feeling conception, whose works dis play the youthful purity of the Madonna and other saints as few of the masters of his time have done.
His earliest work on record is the "High Altar." in Saint Mary's at Cracow, executed in 1477-89, with the "Death of the Virgin" and the "Assumption" in the middle shrine, a work praised as a wonder of art by the master's con temporaries and to this day reckoned among the most perfect creations of its kind, exhibiting the artist's chief characteristics: vivid deseription, varied and animated figures, and rich drapery. Next followed, in 1492, the "Monument of King Casimir IV.," in the Cross Chapel of the Cathe dral, a work of solemn splendor and withal of dignified simplicity. The earliest of his sculp tures executed at Nuremberg are the three stone reliefs of the "Last Supper," "Christ on the Mount of Olives," and "Taking of Christ" (1499). in
the ambulatory of Saint Sebaldus ; over the altar in the same church rises the "Crucifix and Figures of Mary and Saint John," designated as his last work (1526). Of the main altar in the Frauenkirche, only the heroic size statue of the "Madonna" (1504) is preserved, besides two re liefs. The taper-bearing angels in the choir of this church are also by Stoss. In the Germanic Museum may be seen the noble high-relief of the "Crowning of the Virgin by God and Christ," clear in composition and executed with masterly perfection: and the wooden paneling known as the "Rose Garland," in the centre reliefs of the Last -Judgment and of the Heavenly Host grouped around a cross of Saint Anthony within a garland of roses, the whole framed by twenty-three mi nute reliefs of scenes from biblical history. Seven_ more reliefs, which formed part of this work, are now in the Berlin Museum. Noteworthy is the large "Pieta" in the Jaeobskirehe, which also contains several smaller but very able works of the master, but his best-known and chief work in carved wood is "The Angel's Salutation" (151S), in the Church of Saint Lawrence. the central group of heroic size surrounded by a chaplet of roses in which are set seven medallions with the Joys of the Virgin in bas-relief. a work unique in beauty and conception. He executed the superbly carved altar-pieees in the parish church at Schwabach (1506) and in the upper parish church at Bamberg (1523). His engrav ings, scenes from the Passion. severe in style and dating from his early period, are now very rare. Consult: Bergau, Der Bildsehnitzer Veit Sloss and seine Wcrkc (Leipzig, 1877) ; R4e, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographic, xxxvi. (ib., 1893) ; Bode, Geschichte der dputschen Plastik (Berlin, 1887) ; and Lfibke, History of Sculpture, trans, by Bunnett, ii. (London,