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The Veit Stoss Cryptographic Signature on Our Lady Altar in the Parish

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The Veit Stoss Cryptographic Signature on Our Lady Altar in the Parish Dr Agata Wiesna Mond The Veit Stoss cryptographic signature on Our Lady Altar in the Parish Church under Invocation of the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in Książnice Wielkie, Poland, completum est in 1491. At the turn of May and June in 2020, while carrying out my research1 into Veit Stoss altar in the parish church of Ksiaznice Wielkie, I noticed a few Latin and Greek letters and some other graphic signs on the bottom border of a yellow doublet belonging to a painted character, a torturer of Christ, who is standing on the right side of the eventful narrative. The scene itself represents the fifth station of Christ’s Viae Crucis traditionally known and venerated as ‘Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry his cross.’ In the painting the incidental helper is shown just at the moment before he is about to assume that imposed service. (We recall that Roman soldiers made Simon carry Jesus Christ on his way to Golghota; Mt 27,32, Mk 15,21, Lc 23,26). After a closer inspection an enigmatic sequence of signs on the garment’s brim turns out to be somebody’s cryptographic signature. It had been located in a reredos’ left wing with a closed polyptych displaying then the Passion of Christ; a significant constituent itself of Our Lady Altar in Ksiaznice Wielkie, in its both theological and artistic entirety. The village lies in the Little Poland region, in the south of Poland. An attentive old pro of Veit Stoss’ aesthetics will immediately recognize Master’s successive magnum opus, feeding no doubts about its proper attribution. The researcher well acquainted with Stoss’ works is genuinly answering within an instant to a powerful artistic message, being impressed by artist’s knowledge and his vision, embodied in yet another magnificient creation. Especially after having examined hour after hour his resplendent altar at Our Lady Basilica in Krakow. Here in Ksiaznice Wielkie one may likewise follow the design being born in artist’s brilliant mind and pursue, almost involuntary, in an aesthetic rapture, an incarnation of a form, having been wrought into style and aesthetics indyvidualistic of Veit Stoss. Hitherto we have enjoyed and appreciated a plethora of multifaceted descriptions and extensive elucidation of Master Stoss’ opuses. The more multiple the longer accumulated through centuries of critical thinking in the field of history of art and Mediaeval studies.2 My research stand and vantage point are championing Zdzisław Kepinski’s line attributing the altar in Ksiaznice Wielkie to Veit Stoss’s infallible authorship. I claim that bewildering beauty of this masterwork emerges from the polysemy of Artist’s dazzling multipronged technique that had explored and allowed to 1 Within a larger research project on correspondence of arts in Veit Stoss art, entitled: ‘The Three Great Altars by Veit Stoss: Krakow-Książnice Wielkie-Nuremberg/Bamberg.’ 2 The Polish contribution boasts a splendid monograph by Zdzisław Kępiński ‘Wit Stwosz’, Warszawa 1981 together with its German version, next his earlier book dedicated to the last altar by Stoss e.g. ‘Ołtarz Salwatora’/ The Salvator’s Altar, Ossolineum 1969. It is worth mentioning as well Piotr Skubiszewski, ‘Wit Stwosz i sztuka XV wieku’, in: Wokół Wita Stwosza, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, 2006 and Jerzy Gadomski, ‘Homo faber – homo artifex, in: Blask, Ołtarz Mariacki Wita Stwosza by A. Nowakowski, Universitas, 2011. appear expressive power of art of sculpture and aesthetics of painting in their meaning producing interplay. Needless to say, Professor Kepinski’s critical judgment resulted from his first hand empirical experience of the Altar in situ. The centuries-old debate on the indentity of the virtual designer and executioner of the High Gothic winged altar at Ksiaznice Wielkie, whose dating and proved provenace points to Veit Stoss workshop in Krakow, has been demonstrating an attitutude being backed more by non-substantive premises rather than by a probing and insightful investigation of the enquiring eye. Since the artist’s signature has not been spotted so far on the opus itself,3 some fanciful hypotesis have been assumed and launched with regard to its creator and maker. especially pointing to Maestro Stoss’ gifted and skilled apprentices or journeymen. All the more sophisticated as having been solely confirmed with some alleged conjectures of ingenious and imaginative art historians, nevertheless adducing always their ideas with authority figures in the domain of Mediaeval Studies. This is not suprising at all since such an approach has been fostered by the fact that the Ksiaznice Wielkie altar differs greatly in size and media having been used from that one in Krakow. As we recollect the former uses scupltures and panel paintings, while the chef- d’oeuvre of Krakow includes sculptures and relievo. While standing in front of a retabulum in the charming village church one is compelled to admit that panel painting at Ksiaznice Wielkie is, in its most cases, outstanding and perfect in respect of form. The panels representing ‘Resurrection’, ‘Annunciation’ or ‘Last Supper” themes induce an absolute and poignant delight. Then we are invited to watch another episode of the sacred theatre, a peculiar Theatrum Mundi, conceived, directed and presented by Veit Stoss, the German Artist by origin, the universal genius by gift and partly Polish by chance followed by emotional bonds having been developed. He has been traditionally perceived as a prominent sculptor and a skilful engraver. Understandably, an art historian’s conventional thinking seeks always for tradition and authority to come up with their individual academic stand and they more often than not contradict Veit Stoss identitification as a rare and virtuoso painter. However, not only is he on par with his contemporaries (to evoke Rogier van der Weyden for example) revealing his own depth of theological and philosophical cognition, but he appears too as a bold and innovative experimenter trying out an expressive potential of painting as an art itself. On the one hand a factual evaluation of the altar’s artistic weight is vitaly restricted by an on going lithurgical service, an understandable circumstance in regard to a primary target of the altar’s comission. On the other, the work itself being an aesthetic and semantic interplay of painting and sculpture in the same breath, requires an expert judgement of these two art fields at one stroke. The majority of contemporary researchers can hardly believe it might have been a creation of a single mind and two hands only. Indeed, the Ksiaznice Wielkie opus demonstrates its creator’s outstanding greatness and genius. Maestro Stoss addresses us 3 The access to the cryptographic signature is pretty hampered by the panel’s wooden frame casting shadow on a torturer’s body, clad by a doublet embellished with some uncanny letters. They appear there in disguise of a mere decorative motif of a man’s garment whereby, apparently by design, misleading human eyes. with his subtle divinity and a unique wisdom, having been able to penetrate depths of ontological revealed substance. He share his insight generously through eliciting a kind of a sweeping aesthetic experience at an enchanted spectator. Having aqcuired extensive and multifaceted knowledge on nature of Being from official Christian teaching and apocryphal one, Veit Stoss communicates it in his artistic language, both instructive and marvelous, that makes one experience the sacred fused indissolubly with a feeling of beauty. Another reason for a previous inconclusive attribution of the altar has been the one of purely physical character. Having been accustomed to monumental proportions of Our Lady Altar in Krakow’s basilica and its royal panach, we need some time to accomodate the eye to smaller dimensions of the Ksiaznice Wielkie opus: one dares to confess that not without a kind of bitter aesthetic disgruntling. However the onlooker’s eye is immediately invited to explore a correspondence of arts’ working, firstly painting and sculputure, than lierature (the Holy Scripture and music; musical qualities such as rhythm, symmetry, tonality, etc). We are ravished and stunned by their total and polysemantic message being generated just in front of our eyes. A recently spotted cryptographic signature is calling for a thorough and interdisciplinary analysis of the Wielkie Ksiaznice Altar. The new find supports irrecusably Professor Kepinski thesis about evolutional character of Veit Stoss creative process that knits his three grand works, namely High Gothic or baroque Gothic Altars e.g. in Krakow, at Ksiaznice Wielkie and in Bamberg (primarily in Nuremberg). I am going to develop this stand shortly somewhere else through digitilised comparative research. As we remember well, a phenomenological experience of a genuine piece of art is of an immediate character. Indeed, even of an apperceptive one. It is the first split seconds that count on appreciating a work of art. They do interconnect us with creator’s design and his radiant mind which conceives the form and embodies it in the language of art which, nevertheless, needs to be aquired at the supreme mastery. Interfaced with that excellent command of a given artistic skill is his astute perception, embeded in his profound knowledge of divinity dogmas and philosophical dilemmas. His technical virtuosity goes without saying, acting as kind of a sine qua non for being able to justify through visible matter how far he had accessed in the metaphyscial realm during his unfolding creative process. The imaginative genius of Veit Stoss evinces itself in Ksiaznice Wielkie with two art media: sculpture and painting, in the aesthetic interplay of correspondance des arts just operating while we consciously and intentionally open our eyes. A research issue related to expressive affinity and semantic parallelism of those media is a subject matter of my current research project into comparative aesthetics of perfoming arts.4 Yet in the context of this paper my unique focus has been on cryptographic signature graphemes’ structural and semantic anatomy.
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