in
merit.

Then followed the great carvers of the early Renaissance--Adam
Kraft, and Veit Stoss, contemporaries of Peter Vischer and Albrecht
Duerer, whom we must consider for a little, although they hardly
can be called mediaeval workmen.

Veit Stoss was born in the early fifteenth century, in Nueremberg.
He went to Cracow when he was about thirty years of age, and spent
some years working hard. He returned to his native city, however,
in 1496, and worked there for the rest of his life. A delicate
specimen of his craft is the Rosenkranztafel, a wood carving in
the Germanic Museum, which exhibits medallions in relief, representing
the Communion of Saints, with a wreath of roses encircling it. Around
the border of this oblong composition there are small square reliefs,
and a Last Judgment which is full of grim humour occupies the lower
part of the space. Among the amusing incidents represented, is that
of a redeemed soul, quite naked, climbing up a vine to reach heaven,
in which God the Father is in the act of "receiving" Adam and Eve,
shaking hands most sociably! The friends of this aspiring climber
are "boosting" him from below; the most deliciously realistic proof
that Stoss had no use for the theory of a winged hereafter!

Veit Stoss was a very versatile craftsman. Besides his wonderful
wood carvings, for which he is chiefly noted, he was a bridge-builder,
a stone-mason, a bronze caster, painter of altars, and engraver on
copper! Like all such variously talented persons, he suffered somewhat
from restlessness and preferred work to peace,--but his compensation
lay in the varied joys of creative works. His naturalism was marked
in all that he did: a naive old chronicler remarks that he made
some life-sized coloured figures of Adam and Eve, "so fashioned
that one was _afraid_ that they were alive!" Veit Stoss was an
interesting individual. He was not especially moral in all his ways,
narrowly escaping being executed for forgery; but his brilliancy as
a technician was unsurpassed. He lived until 1533, when he died
in Nueremberg as a very old man. One of his most delightful
achievements is the great medallion with an open background, which
hangs in the centre of the Church of St. Lorenz. It shows two large
and graceful figures,--Mary and the Angel Gabriel, the subject
being the Annunciation. A wreath of angels and flowers surrounds
the whole, with small medallions representing the seven joys of the
Virgin. It is a ma