The sculptor Adam Kraft left an enduring mark on Nuremberg. This was no accident, since his patrician patrons commissioned him to carve their public presence in the medium of “weatherproof” stone. What do these works show us about the women, men, and institutions that brought about their existence? What do the monuments tell us about the subsequent generations who maintained them? The sculptures still speak to us. If we look carefully we can learn their original stories, if we listen closely they will reveal the secrets they heard during their 500-years in the city. Adam Kraft sculpted confident self-portraits of himself and his late-medieval craft. He designed a splendid towering container for the cult of the Eucharistic host. He made one of the cruelest images of female martyrdom. He fashioned the Falls of Christ at the hands of “the Jews,” who “struck him very hard.” Why were these works of art allowed to outlive their original purposes as the city has changed around them?
Corine Schleif teaches medieval and Renaissance art at Arizona State University. She has published widely on issues of donation, memory and self-representation, often focusing on German art and particularly on cultural connections and reception of artistic production in late-medieval Nuremberg, e.g. Donatio et Memoria (1990), Katerina’s Windows (with V. Schier 2009), and Adam Kraft and the Sculpting of Art’s History (in progress). Schleif has likewise (co-)edited three volumes of essays (2008, 2010 and 2016) and heads international collaborative projects examining multisensory art, e.g. exploring a liturgical manuscript in Opening the Geese Book (launched 2012), and studying emotions and empathy facilitated through a virtual reality reconstruction of the Birgittine abbey at Vadstena, Social concerns of class, gender, animality, and ethnicity inform her research.