Akademik

(active 1393-1410)

   Marzal de Sax may have been a native of Saxony, but was active in Valencia, Spain, from 1393 until his death in 1410 where he became one of the local exponents of the International Style. He is believed to have studied with Pedro Nicolau as the earliest work he rendered, an altarpiece for the Confraternity of St. James, was a collaboration with this artist. He was to work together with other Valencian painters, among them Gonzalo Pérez in 1404 and Gerardo Gener in 1405. In 1410, Marzal de Sax received free lodging from the city of Valencia for his artistic merits and generosity in imparting his knowledge of art to fellow local masters. In the documents relating to this grant he is qualified as ill and impoverished. Marzal de Sax's most outstanding work is the Retable of St. George (c. 1400-1410; London, Victoria and Albert Museum), a complex altarpiece that consists of three major scenes in the center presenting St. George fighting the dragon, the Battle of El Puig de Santa Maria (1238) when James I of Aragon conquered Valencia, and a nursing Virgin and Child surmounted by an adult enthroned Christ. At either side are 16 narrative panels of the life of St. George and on thepredella are scenes from the Passion. Marzal de Sax's art is characterized by the use of elongated crude types crowded into the pictorial space and engaged in overstated gestures, as well as heavy gilding, all part of the language of the International Style.