KRAFFT (or Kraft), ADAM (c. 1455–1507), German sculptor, of the Nuremberg school, was born, probably at Nuremberg, about the middle of the 15th century, and died, some say in the hospital, at Schwabach, about 1507. He seems to have emerged as sculptor about 1490, the date of the seven reliefs of scenes from the life of Christ, which, like almost every other specimen of his work, are at Nuremberg. The date of his last work, an Entombment, with fifteen life-size figures, in the Holzschuher chapel of the St John’s cemetery, is 1507. Besides these, Krafft’s chief works are several monumental reliefs in the various churches of Nuremberg; he produced the great Schreyer monument (1492) for St Sebald’s at Nuremberg, a skilful though mannered piece of sculpture opposite the Rathaus, with realistic figures in the costume of the time, carved in a way more suited to wood than stone, and too pictorial in effect; Christ bearing the Cross, above the altar of the same church; and various works made for public and private buildings, as the relief over the door of the Wagehaus, a St George and the Dragon, several Madonnas, and some purely decorative pieces, as coats of arms. His masterpiece is perhaps the magnificent tabernacle, 62 ft. high, in the church of St Laurence (1493–1500). He also made the great tabernacle for the Host, 80 ft. high, covered with statuettes, in Ulm Cathedral, and the very spirited “Stations of the Cross” on the road to the Nuremberg cemetery.
See Adam Krafft und seine Schule, by Friedrich Wanderer (1869); Adam Krafft und die Künstler seiner Zeit, by Berthold Daun (1897); Albert Gümbel in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Bd. xxv. Heft 5, 1902.