throughout Germany. Of the surviving stone carvings
attributed to him or to his school, only fi ve are authen-
ticated by documents or signatures. The earliest to
display his new inner dynamism and portrait realism is
the signed tomb effi gy of Archbishop Jacob von Sierck,
dated 1462, now in the Diocesan Museum in Trier. Origi-
nally the upper half of a two-tiered tomb with his decay-
ing corpse below, the deeply cut effi gy was undoubtedly
made by a mature artist. His stay in Strasbourg, where
Nicolaus was mentioned frequently in documents from
1463 to 1467 and where he became a citizen in 1464, is
the best-documented and most productive period of his
life. Here he was commissioned in 1464 to create the
portal of the Neue Kanzlei (New Chancellery), on which
busts appeared as if looking down from a window; only
two heads survive: the so-called Bärbel von Ottenheim
in the Liebieghaus Museum in Frankfurt and Count
Jacob von Hanau-Lichtenberg in the Musée de l’Oeuvre
NotreDame in Strasbourg. The Epitaph of Conrad von
Busnang in the Chapel of St. John in the cathedral at
Strasbourg, signed and dated 1464, provides the only
comparison for Madonna statues attributed to his circle.
In 1465–1467 he worked on the carved wood high altar
for the Constance Minster that was later destroyed. His
best-known work, the signed Crucifi x for the Old Cem-
etery in Baden-Baden, now in the Stiftskirche there, was
dated 1467. In the same year, in response to the second
invitation of Emperor Frederick III, Nicolaus went to
Vienna and Wiener Neustadt, where he was responsible
for the tomb lid of the Emperor in the Apostle’s Choir
of St. Stephen in Vienna. Nicolaus died in 1473 and was
buried in Wiener Neustadt. There are fewer documents
from these last years, and they provide less certitude in
regard to the extent of his work.
In spite of the widespread destruction of Netherland-
ish sculpture of the fi fteenth century and a lack of study
of French work of the same time, the stylistic origins
of Nicolaus are generally agreed to lie in the Flemish-
Burgundian region. The individualism of his portrait
heads derives from those of Claus Sluter at Dijon, and
his knowledge of the late work of Jan van Eyck is also
generally accepted. His busts from the Chancellery at
Strasbourg are often compared to the earlier fi gures
above the entrance to the house of Jacques Coeur in
Bourges. The new dynamism he infused into his fi gures
together with their physical expressiveness and the drap-
ery expanding into the surrounding space characterize
his contribution to the new style. These characteristics
also appear in the works of the Masters E.S. and Martin
Schongauer, both working in the Rhineland at approxi-
mately the same time as Nicolaus; the engravings of
these artists are partly responsible for the rapid spread
of his style in the late fi fteenth century.
The most convincing unsigned and undocumented
work attributed to Nicolaus is the bust of a Meditating
Man in the Strasbourg museum, assumed to be a self-
portrait, also from the New Chancellery. The Crucifi xion
Altar in Nördlingen and the Virgin of Dangolsheim in
Berlin are frequently considered his early work or that
of a sculptor close to him.
See also Frederick III, Schongauer, Martin;
Sluter, ClausFurther Reading
Müller, Theodor. Sculpture in the Netherlands, Germany, France
and Spain 1400 to 1500. Pelican History of Art 25. Harmond-
sworth: Penguin, 1966, pp. 79–87.
Recht, Roland. “Nicolas de Leyde et la sculpture à Strasbourg
(1460–1525).” Ph.D. diss., Université des Sciences Humaines
de Strasbourg, 1978. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de
Strasbourg, 1987, pp. 115–151, 341–345.
Marta O. RengerNILUS OF ROSSANO
(c. 910–1004)
Nilus of Rossano (Neilos) is perhaps the best-known
representative of Greek monasticism in medieval Italy
before the Great Schism. The chief source for his biogra-
phy is an anonymous eleventh-century Life of Saint Nilus
the Younger, an impressive document of Italo-Greek
monastic ideals; despite the exemplary import of the
incidents chosen for narration, it seems in outline to be
factually accurate. According to this account, Nilus was
born to an aristocratic family in Rossano, an important
eastern Roman (Byzantine) administrative center in
eastern Calabria, received a good religious education,
and was orphaned at an early age. At the age of thirty, he
abandoned the world (he had sired a daughter, perhaps
out of wedlock) for an ascetic life in the mountainous
border region of the Mercurion and there came under
the infl uence of Fantinus the Younger and other holy
fathers. To evade a gubernatorial ban on his becoming
a monk, he took the habit at a Greek monastery in the
Lombard principality of Salerno. Nilus then returned to
Fantinus’s lavra (colony of anchorites). Living fi rst there
and then in a nearby cave, he learned and later taught
calligraphy. During this time he also traveled to Rome
to visit the tombs of the apostles and to consult books
whose identity, regrettably, is unknown.
Arab raids caused Nilus to retreat in the late 940s to
one of his properties near Rossano, where together with
some of his students he founded a monastery of his own.
He resided here as a penitent for the next quarter-century,
achieving more than local repute as a holy man and
miracle worker. He is said to have declined being named
bishop of Rossano and to have obtained from the emirNICOLAUS GERHAERT VON LEYDEN