MARZAL DE SAX, Andrés

This large altarpiece is a fine example of the Valencian school during the International Gothic Style in the first quarter of the 15th century. It was traditionally attributed to the German painter established in Valencia, Andr�s Marzal de Sax (or Mar�al de Sas) although this attribution is still subject to debate and leads to more cautiously call the artist responsible for this work ‘Master of the Centenar’ according to the provenance of the retable most likely executed for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Centenar de la Ploma.

The altarpiece illustrates the legend of the St George, a Christian warrior saint, said to have lived at the end of the 3rd century. It is composed of 3 superimposed central panels surmounted by the Holy Spirit and Christ enthroned flanked by two prophets. On each side are depicted 10 scenes of the life of the saint, combining two different narrative cycles: the victory of St George against the dragon and the martyrdom of the saint while the predella panel illustrates 10 scenes of the passion of Christ.

This battle scene is the central panel of a retable dedicated to St George. There are several assumptions concerning the exact datation and location of the represented battle. The most acceptable is that it was the battle of El Puig de Santa Maria (Hill of Saint Mary, about 8 miles from Valencia) which took place in September 1238. After the battle Valencia was surrendered to the Catalan king, James I the Conqueror. On the painting St George is participating in the battle on the side of the Catalan king.

This battle scene is the central panel of a retable dedicated to St George. There are several assumptions concerning the exact datation and location of the represented battle. The most acceptable is that it was the battle of El Puig de Santa Maria (Hill of Saint Mary, about 8 miles from Valencia) which took place in September 1238. After the battle Valencia was surrendered to the Catalan king, James I the Conqueror. On the painting St George is participating in the battle on the side of the Catalan king.

The painter chiefly responsible for the transition from the style of the fourteenth to that of the fifteenth century, was Marzal de Sax, who was of German origin. The most important of his works to be preserved is the splendid retable of St. George, one of the treasures of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The central scene depicts the conquest of Valencia by James I of Aragon. A distinctive feature of the work of this artist is his great skill in composition. The figures are grouped with great freedom, but without loss of order or clarity and without sacrifice of detail. The battle scene is a careful study of the weapons and military pomp of the period. It is clear that the art of Marzal de Sax must have contributed heavily to the spread of International Gothic style in Valencia and the consequent abandonment of a tradition of static images and delicate, but ingenuous compositions.

In the age before analgesics or anesthetics death was sometimes better than life. The living body was often torn apart by terrible, unrelenting pain. Gothic artists registered these agonies by depicting the excruciating suffering of the saints.

In the later Middle Ages people were attuned to the body as a theater of torment, a site of incredible horror. In their large multipaneled altarpieces, Spanish painters of the International Gothic style were especially adept at evoking the rich textures and glowing surfaces of flesh as it was torn from bone and the lining of skin as it was ripped away by grinning, grotesque executioners. By the flickering of a thousand candles, bodies like that of St George glistened in all their gory glory and provided a locus of identification for all those whose sick bodies ached and who could enter into the voluptuous sufferings of the saints. Such images of death were produced in a culture ravaged by constant war and quite used to the public spectacle of corporal punishment meted out to miscreants in the public squares of towns. While the naked sexual body was consigned to the margins, the naked, sadistically tormented body, whether of Christ or the saints, was given center stage.