Tobias Stimmer

Stand in Strasbourg Cathedral and look up at the towering astronomical clock: the painted and decorated case around all those dials and moving figures was designed by a Swiss artist from Schaffhausen named Tobias Stimmer. Between 1571 and 1574 the mathematician Conrad Dasypodius, who built the clockwork, brought Stimmer in to give the machine its outward face, wrapping the whole structure in panels of painting.

Stimmer had already made his name at home. In 1568 he covered the front of a Schaffhausen house, the Haus zum Ritter, with a huge facade of painted classical scenes, one of the grandest works of its kind in Switzerland at the time. He was also a tireless hand for the printing presses, turning out woodcut designs of Bible stories and portraits for publishers in Frankfurt and Strasbourg.

He was a Renaissance artist working right where the German and French worlds met on the Rhine, and he died in Strasbourg in 1584, only 44 years old. The clock case he designed still stands, rebuilt with new works over the centuries but keeping the overall shape he gave it.