Veit Stoss’s Jesse

After Napoleon conquered most of central Europe around 1800 and the Holy Roman Empire collapsed, almost all monasteries were dissolved and countless churches were profaned or demolished. Many works of art changed hands or were lost. Even then, however, there were collectors who were enthusiastic about medieval objects, among them numerous German noblemen who built up spectacular collections by acquiring works of art from abandoned monasteries. One of them was Prince Ludwig of Oettingen-Wallerstein, who had his estates about 50 miles southwest of Nuremberg. The newly acquired sculpture of Jesse comes from this collection, and its quality remained largely unrecognized until recently. It was only about 10 years ago that it was presented to the public as a work by the Nuremberg artist Veit Stoss.

Based in Nuremberg and Krakow, Stoss was one of the most renowned artists of the period around 1500. His reputation spread as far as Italy. He created a figure of Saint Roch for the Basilica Santissima Annunziata in Florence, and the Italian biographer Giorgio Vasari praised him in the 16th century as a marvel of woodcarving. 

The figure of Jesse, which comes from a large altarpiece, shows the father of King David from the Old Testament. In his role as the ancestor of Jesus, Jesse was usually depicted in medieval art as sleeping, with a tree trunk emerging from him, representing the family tree of Christ. 

Stoss gave the figure extraordinary features. The eye is immediately drawn to his striking posture and finely carved face, every detail of which illustrates the prophet’s sleep. Viewers are confronted with a figure who is obviously asleep but at the same time seems to be in a state of concentrated tension. While Jesse presents his head in a mannered way with his right hand, he grasps the trunk protruding from his chest (from which the family tree of Christ, once emerged) with his left hand, as if he is touching something particularly precious. Lost today is the center of the altarpiece with the branching family tree, which showed Mary with the Christ child at the top. 

The Jesse figure is probably the most important discovery in the field of late Gothic sculpture in recent times and it takes the CMA’s collection from the German-speaking world to an extraordinary new level.