Hans
Valkenauer

Austrian sculptor, * c. 1448 - † after 1518.

Most important stone sculptor of the late Gothic period in Salzburg.

Probably came from the Salzburg area; first mentioned on 18.10.1479, when he was granted citizenship in Salzburg. He created numerous figural tomb slabs, mainly in red marble; among the most important are funerary monuments in the city churches of Braunau and Villach, the collegiate churches of Maria Saal and Millstatt in Carinthia, at Hohensalzburg Castle and in the Margaret Chapel of St. Peter's Cemetery in Salzburg. From 1514 onwards, he worked on a monument to the Roman Emperors commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I, which was to be erected in Speyer Cathedral. Parts of the unfinished work are now in Salzburg's Carolino Augusteum Museum. He is credited with the marble relief with the depiction of the Holy Trinity donated by Cunz Horn in 1502, which was planned as an altar reredos but was finally mounted as an epitaph on the western sacristy wall of the Lorenzkirche. Remarkable is the size of the red marble sculpture of 3.30 x 2.40 m and the price of 200 fl., which corresponded to the value of a burgher's house. 

Lit.: Thieme-Becker; W. Cerny: Hans Valkenauer und die spätgotische Grabmalplastik in der Diözese Salzburg. Diss. Vienna 1983; Schleif, 1990 p. 77.

Frank Matthias Kammel

 (quoted from the Nuremberg Künstlerlexikon, edited by Manfred H. Grieb)