The image of illness in Veit Stoss’s works of art

Abstract

The article takes up the issue of ideological connections between the philosophy of man developed in the 15th century by the Cracovian masters from the Universitatis Cracoviensis and Cracovian Gothic art, above all the sculptures created by Veit Stoss in his Cracovian period. The German master-carver showed in his Cracovian Altarpiece a vast range of individual portrait-studies, realistic and naturalistic in character. During the Cracovian period some essential transformations took place in Veit Stoss’s oeuvre. He created naturalistic portrait-studies unknown in the European art of the time, depicting even pathological changes, such as cancerous skin lesions, which Stoss perceived on the human body. We have known – on the basis of archival sources – that Veit Stoss maintained friendly contacts with Jan of Głogów, author of the treatise Physionomia hincinde ex illustribus scriptoribus per venerabilem virum magistrum Joannem Glogoviensem diligentissime recol lecta, printed in Kraków in 1518. I wish to prove that the content of this treatise – including the issue of skin diseases – found its reflection in the art of one of the leading sculptors of the late medieval Europe.