Veit Stoss

Out of the three wooden statues exhibited in the Hungarian National Gallery as a rood group from Spisska Belá (Szepesbéla), only the Christ on the Cross is appropriately designated. As for the two thieves, both the provenance and the style suggest that originally they were set up somewhere around Banská Bystrica (Besztercebánya): they can be attributed to the workshop of the Pukanec (Bakabánya) high altar. The style of this workshop can be traced to Veit Stoss's Cracow workshop on the basis not only of borrowed motifs but also of the paintings of the Pukanec high altar. The present paper adds to these paintings the original fixed wings. Similarly to Stoss's workshop in Cracow, the workshop of the Pukanec high altar probably also employed a permanent polychrome painter.
When placed side by side with the corresponding statues in the Crucifixion group of eight figures in the shrine of the Pukanec high altar, the Budapest statues appear to be workshop replicas. The original altarpiece from which they possibly originate may also be taken for a workshop copy. Together with the Crucifix and St John the Evangelist in the museum of Banská Bystrica, the thieves are probably identical with the remains of the Crucifixion altarpiece once at the threshold of the sanctuary of the parish church of Ľubietová. The comparison of the two altarpieces outlines the practice of serial production in the workshop whose leader balanced off his modest sculptural talent with multifigural, easily varied compositional schemes.

Thema: Funktion und Bedeutung der Polychromie am Beispiel des Englischen Grußes von Veit Stoß

Zit.: Nienas, Sarah, Die materialisierte Erscheinung. Aspekte zu Raum und Polychromie des Englischen Grußes von Veit Stoß, in: 500 Jahre Engelsgruß in St. Lorenz Nürnberg, hrsg. von der Evang.-Luth. Kirchengemeinde St. Lorenz, Lindenberg i. Allgäu 2018

Thema: Funktion und Bedeutung der Polychromie am Beispiel des Englischen Grußes von Veit Stoß

Zit.: Nienas, Sarah, Die materialisierte Erscheinung. Aspekte zu Raum und Polychromie des Englischen Grußes von Veit Stoß, in: 500 Jahre Engelsgruß in St. Lorenz Nürnberg, hrsg. von der Evang.-Luth. Kirchengemeinde St. Lorenz, Lindenberg i. Allgäu 2018

Master Paul from Levoča was the most important Spiš wood-carver at the turn of the 16th century. The outstanding achievement of his workshop is the main altar of the Parish Church of St James in Levoča, created between the years 1508 and ca. 1514. Master Paul, however, was active in other towns and regions also: in Kežmarok, Banská Bystrica, Spišské Vlachy, Prešov and Sabinov. His co-workers, who brought his characteristic idealising style (close to that of the Nuremberg sculptor Veit Stoss) even further afield, created still more altars, crucifixes, and free-standing statues.
The paper is dedicated to one of the most monumental Crucifixions that can be attributed directly to Master Paul, situated today in the shrine of the Highaltar of the Parish Church of the Holy Cross in Kežmarok, Slovakia (Germ.: Käsmark; Hung.: Késmárk). It discusses the place of the artefact in a context of the sculptor´s oeuvre as well as its possible original use as reconstructed from the younger sources concerning the church furnishings.