KRAFFT, or Kraft, Adam (c. 1455-1507), 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. Of his life few particulars are known beyond the dates of several of his works. 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; the alto-rilievo Entombment outside St Sebald’s church; 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 feet high, in the church of St Laurence, 1493-1500. See Wanderer’s Adam Kraft und seine Schule, 1869.