The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (298 page)

(1907–69).
British painter and sculptor, the wife of Kenneth
Martin
, who was a fellow student at the
Royal College of Art
. She painted landscapes and still lifes, but during the 1940s her work, like that of her husband, moved towards geometrical abstraction. With Kenneth Martin and Victor
Pasmore
she belonged to the group of post-war
Constructivists
which continued the tradition of geometrical abstraction in England. Her major commissions included a Wall Construction for the University of Stirling (1969).

 
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(active 1427–52).
Spanish painter and
miniaturist
. He worked in Barcelona and was the outstanding painter in Catalonia in the second quarter of the 15th cent., the successor to
Borrassá
, who probably taught him. Only one surviving work is securely documented—the
Altarpiece of St Peter of Púbol
(Gerona Mus., 1437)—but on stylistic grounds a group of paintings formerly given to ‘the Master of St George’ has been attributed to him. The group includes (and formerly took its identity from) an altarpiece of St George; the central panel is in the Art Institute of Chicago and the four wings are in the Louvre. Martorell's work, influenced by Franco-Flemish painting and
illumination
, was essentially
International Gothic
in style, but reveals a highly distinctive personality, particularly in its vigorous sense of drama and delicate handling of light. Among the painters of the next generation
Huguet
was most obviously indebted to him.

 
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(active 1393–1410).
Painter, probably of German origin (Sax indicating Saxony), who worked in Valencia. Only one fragment survives of his documented works—the
Incredulity of St Thomas
in Valencia Cathedral, part of an altarpiece he completed for the cathedral in 1400. Among the works given to him on stylistic grounds the most important is the huge and sumptuous
retable
of St George (V&A, London), featuring the varied tortures of the saint in grisly detail. The somewhat rough vigour of Marzal de Sax's style had considerable influence in Valencia; he is last mentioned in 1410, impoverished and ill, receiving free lodging from the city in recognition of the quality of his work and his generosity in training local painters.

 
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(1401–28).
Florentine painter. Although he died in his mid-twenties he brought about a revolution in painting and he ranks alongside his friends
Alberti
,
Brunelleschi
, and
Donatello
as one of the founding fathers of the
Renaissance
. His affectionate nickname, which may be translated as ‘Sloppy Tom’, was given to him, so
Vasari
says, because he was so devoted to art that ‘he refused to give any time to worldly causes, even to the way he dressed’. He became a guild member in Florence in 1422, but nothing is known of his training, the tradition that he was taught by
Masolino
, later his collaborator, now being discounted. The earliest work attributed to him is the San Giovenale
Triptych
(Uffizi, Florence, 1422), which is somewhat uncouth but reveals a totally individual spirit in its rejection of all
Gothic
elegance and concentration on the weight and bulk of the figures. Instead of learning from contemporary painters, Masaccio looked back to
Giotto
for inspiration, recapturing the gravity and grandeur that characterized his work. But whereas Giotto set his figures in space intuitively, Masaccio grappled with and solved the problem of creating a completely coherent and consistent sense of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, his work thus becoming one of the cornerstones of European painting. His enormous achievement was based on his mastery of the new science of
perspective
and his use of a single constant light source to define the construction of the body and its draperies. Among contemporary artists he was closest in spirit to Donatello. Both artists were less concerned with surface appearances and isolated detail than with the underlying construction of objects and both excelled at the depiction of emotion with great force and directness. Masaccio has left three great works to posterity in which he enunciated his new principles: a
polyptych
(1426) for the Carmelite church in Pisa (the central panel is in the National Gallery in London, and other parts in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, the Getty Museum, Malibu, the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, and the Museo Nazionale, Pisa); a fresco cycle, done in collaboration with Masolino, on the life of St Peter (with additional scenes of
The Temptation
and
The Expulsion from Paradise
) in the Brancacci Chapel of Sta Maria del Carmine, Florence (
c.
1425–8); and a fresco of the
Trinity
in Sta Maria Novella, Florence (probably 1428). Masaccio went to Rome in 1428, leaving the frescos in the Brancacci Chapel unfinished, and died so suddenly that Vasari said ‘there were some who even suspected he had been poisoned’. Vasari adds that ‘during his lifetime he had made only a modest name for himself’, and certainly many of his Florentine contemporaries and successors were unmoved by his innovations. He was a great inspiration to the progressive masters of the next generation, however (Filippo
Lippi
,
Piero della Francesca
), and Vasari records a whole roster of great artists, including
Leonardo
,
Michelangelo
, and
Raphael
, who studied his work with profit.

 
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