around 1941. It was rediscovered in 1945 in Bavaria, hidden in the basement of the heavily bombed Nuremberg Castle. The High Altar underwent major restoration work in Poland and was put back in its place at the Basilica ten years later. Nuremberg In 1496, Stoss returned to Nuremberg with his wife and eight children. He reacquired his citizenship for three gulden and resumed his work there as a sculptor. Between 1500 and 1503 he carved an altar, now lost, for the parish church of Schwaz, Tyrol of the "Assumption of Mary". In 1503, he was arrested for forging the seal and signature of a fraudulent contractor and was sentenced to be branded on both of his cheeks and prohibited from leaving Nuremberg without the explicit permission of the city council. He was pardoned in 1506 by Emperor Maximilian and restored of his civil rights. Despite the prohibition he went to Münnerstadt in 1504, to paint and gild the altarpiece that Tilman Riemenschneider had left in plain wood ten years earlier, presumably according to his contract (unlike Stoss, his workshop did not include painters and gilders). Leaving wood sculpture unpainted was a new taste at the time, and "perhaps the tastes of the city council were somewhat provincial." He also created the altar for Bamberg Cathedral and various other sculptures in Nuremberg, including the Annunciation and Tobias and the Angel. In 1506 he was arrested a second time. In 1507, Emperor Maximilian wrote a letter of pardon. The sole argument was made on the account of his genius. The council of the Imperial free city Nuremberg refused to give him a public notice. But Maximilian's intervention saved him from the dungeons and having his hands chopped off. He was able to resettle in Nuremberg from 1506, but was shunned by the council and received few large commissions from that time onwards. In 1512, the Emperor asked Stoss to help with the planning of his tomb monument, which was eventually placed in the Hofkirche, Innsbruck; it seems Stoss's attempts to cast in brass were unsuccessful. During the period 1515–1520, Veit Stoss received a commission for sculptures by Raffaele Torrigiani, a rich Florentine merchant. In 1516 he made Tobias and the Angel (now in Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg), and a statue of Saint Roch for the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. This wooden statue represents the saint in a traditional way: in the