Jean Troupin, a “simple workman at the wages of three sous a day,” was added to the staff of workers in 1516, and in one of the stalls he has carved his own portrait, with the inscription, “Jan Troupin, God take care of thee.”  In 1522 the entire work was completed, and was satisfactorily terminated on St. John’s day, representing the entire labour of six or eight men for about fourteen years.

In the fifteenth century Germany led all countries in the art of wood carving.  Painting was nearly always allied to this art in ecclesiastical use.  The sculptured forms were gilded and painted, and, in some cases, might almost be taken for figures in faience, so high was the polish.  Small altars, with carved reredos and frontals, were very popular, both for church and closet.  The style employed was pictorial, figures and scenes being treated with great naturalism.  One of the famous makers of such altar pieces was Lucas Moeser, in the earlier part of the fifteenth century.  A little later came Hans Schuelein, and then followed Freidrich Herlin, who carved the fine altar in Rothenburg.  Jorg Syrlin of Ulm and his son of the same name cover the latter half of the century.

Bavaria was the chief province in which sculptors in wood flourished.  The figures are rather stumpy sometimes, and the draperies rather heavy and lacking in delicate grace, but the works are far more numerous than those of other districts, and vary enormously 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!