Wood-carving (as a visit to the Museum will demonstrate) flourished exceedingly at Nuremberg. There were indeed so many carvers there towards the end of the fifteenth century that it is difficult to understand how they all gained a livelihood. The greatest artist among them, if we except the unknown master of the Nuremberg Madonna in the Museum, was certainly Veit Stoss. Born in 1440 he was of abstemious and frugal habits and lived till 1533. In 1477 he gave up his rights of citizenship, went to Poland, and at Cracow made a great reputation by the high altar and choir-stalls he carved for the Church of St. Mary there. Like Durer he was very versatile--a carver in wood and stone, painter, engraver, mechanician, and architect. But unlike most of the great artists of this period, his character was stained by a considerable crime. On returning to Nuremberg in 1496 he was nick-named the Pole and was presently condemned on a charge of forging a signature to a document which was to substantiate his claim against a Nuremberg merchant, whom he accused of having cheated him out of a sum of money. He was sentenced to be branded on both cheeks--a gentle punishment, seeing that a forger was liable to lose both eyes. The Council also compelled him to swear that he would never leave Nuremberg, but, when he found that no one would work with him, he fled. But later, the Council pardoned him and received him back. They seem to have appreciated his artistic gifts as much as Maximilian. Stoss worked very diligently at Nuremberg and received orders even from Transylvania and Portugal. Whatever his character--and it is fair to add that on the count of forgery he always maintained that he was unjustly accused--his art will always bring him praise. Of his numberless altar-pieces, crucifixes and Madonnas, the very beautiful wood gilt crucifix and the much-admired Angels' Greeting, both in the Lorenzkirche, are the most famous. His earliest work in Nuremberg is a painted carving of the Madonna and Child on the north wall of the Frauenkirche, executed for the old Welser Altar (1504). Veit Stoss, it is pointed out in his later work, exhibits the increasing influence of Albert Durer, but nowhere more unmistakably than in the "Englischer Gruss" (1518)--the Angelic Greeting, which hangs from the roof of the Lorenzkirche, a work of tender piety, in which the delicacy of the figures is very noticeable. Formerly the Greeting hung in the choir suspended by a costly chain. But owing to the torrent of coarse abuse which Osiander, the great preacher and reformer, hurled against it, it was wrapped up in a green sack, on which were set the Tucher arms. Later on, the chain was replaced by a rope. Then the Greeting was moved about from church to church till at last it returned to St. Lawrence's. But it was insecurely hung, and in 1817 it fell from a height of 50 feet and was broken to pieces. It was very skilfully put together again by the brothers Rotermundt.