sidetracked. Having lost 1,265 guilders speculating on
copper, Stoss forged a promissory note in 1503. After
being convicted, he was branded on both cheeks and
banned from leaving the city. In 1504 Stoss fl ed and
worked briefl y in Münnerstadt, where he polychromed
Tillmann Riemenschneider’s Mary Magdalene Al-
tarpiece (1490–1492) and painted four scenes of the
Martyrdom of St. Kilian on the wings. These are Stoss’s
only documented paintings; he also created ten engrav-
ings during this decade. Stoss returned to Nuremberg
and through the intercession of Emperor Maximilian
resumed his career. For the choir of St. Sebaldus, he
made the limewood St. Andrew (1505–1507), in which
the clear and stable pose of the apostle contrasts with
the marvelous billowing drapery.
Stoss carved both small-scale and large statues
throughout the 1510s and 1520s for local patrons and
churches. His greatest feat was the Angelic Salutation
(1517–1518), an over-life-size Annunciation suspended
from the choir vault in St. Lorenz church. Supported
by an angel holding sanctus bells, Gabriel and Mary
fl oat before the high altar. They are enframed by a giant
rosary complete with roses, beads, small fi gured roun-
dels, a group of joyous angels, and, at the apex, God.
The ensemble included a great crown above, now lost,
and Jakob Pülmann’s candelabrum. Commissioned by
Anton II Tucher, Nuremberg’s highest offi cial, the An-
gelic Salutation was covered for much of the liturgical
year. With the advent of the Reformation in Nuremberg,
the whole group was sheathed permanently from 1529
until circa 1806. The Reformation also affected Stoss’s
fi nal great commission, the Mary Altar (1520–1523)
ordered by the artist’s son, Andreas Stoss, who was the
prior of the local Carmelite convent. Stoss’s preparatory
drawing is today in the University Museum in Kraków.
The sculptor had yet to be paid when the convent was
dissolved in 1525.
After a long legal battle, the altarpiece was trans-
ferred by Stoss’s heirs to Bamberg in 1543 and is now
in the cathedral. Like several of Stoss’s later carvings,
the Mary Altar was stained but never polychromed.
Stoss continued working at least until 1532. His im-
pact on regional sculpture, at least before 1525, was
considerable.
See also Maximilian; Riemenschneider, Tillmann;
Schongauer, Martin
Further Reading
Baxandall, Michael. The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance
Germany. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980.
Kahsnitz, Rainer. “Veit Stoss in Nürnberg. Eine Nachlese zum
Katalog und zur Ausstellung.” Anzeiger des Germanischen
Nationalmuseum (1984): 39–70.
——, ed. Veit Stoss in Nürnberg: Werke des Meisters und seiner
Schule in Nürnberg und Umgebung. Munich: Deutscher
Kunstverlag, 1983.
——, ed. Veit Stoss: Die Vorträge des Nürnberger Symposions.
Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1985.
Lutze, Eberhard. Veit Stoss, 4th ed. Munich: Deutscher Kunst-
verlag, 1968.
Oellermann, Eike. “Die monochromen Holzbildwerke des Veit
Stoss.” Maltechnik 82 (1976): 173–182.
Sello, Gottfried. Veit Stoss. Munich: Hirmer, 1988.
Skubiszewski, Piotr. Veit Stoss und Polen. Nuremberg: Ger-
manisches Nationalmuseum, 1983.
Soding, Ulrich. “Veit Stoss am Oberrhein: Zur Kunstgeschich-
tlichen Stellung der ‘Isenheimer Muttergottes’ im Louvre.”
Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Würt-
temberg 29 (1992): 50–76.
Jeffrey Chipps SmithSTRICKER, DER (ca. 1190–ca. 1250)
This itinerant poet, known only by his pseudonym, was
probably born toward the end of the twelfth century in
the Middle German region. A major portion of his life
was spent in Austria, where he died about 1250, if the
last poems for which reliable dates exist are taken as
terminus post quern. Clearly not a member of the no-
bility, he seems to have worked for various audiences
and patrons, although none is known to us by name.
His oeuvre, consisting of nearly 170 works and span-
ning a wide variety of genres, attests not only to his
versatility and originality but also to his considerable
knowledge of theological and legal issues. He is familiar
with the works of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von
Eschenbach. The paucity of information regarding the
poet extends to the chronology of his works. While it
is generally assumed that his two longer works, Daniel
von dem Blühenden Tal and Karl der Große, are prod-
ucts of his youth, it remains impossible to establish a
sequence for Pfaffe Amis, various stories of medium
length, and his vast output of short narratives consist-
ing of fables, prayers, didactic poems, and a corpus of
Mären (stories or tales) that constitute his actual claim
to fame. Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal, consisting of
8,478 verses and transmitted in four extant manuscripts,
is a highly original treatment of the Arthurian romance
genre. Denounced by earlier scholarship, which viewed
Stricker’s novum of an unproblematic hero and an ac-
tive, functioning society as a serious misunderstanding
of the genre, it is recognized today as the coherent and
skillful text that introduced the notion of ratio as a means
to avoid the pitfalls of human life. The popularity of
Stricker’s Karl is attested to by twenty-four manuscripts
and twenty-three fragments. Whether it was written in
the wake of the Charlemagne revival or occasioned by
the moving of his remains to Aachen in 1215 or by the
transport of Charlemagne reliquaries to Zurich in 1233
still must be determined. Although Stricker’s primary
source was the Chanson de Roland, modern scholarshipSTOSS, VEIT