Andrés Marzal de Sas

In the Victoria and Albert Museum in London stands an altarpiece more than six metres tall, painted in Valencia around 1400 for the Centenar de la Ploma, the city's company of crossbowmen. Its lowest central panel shows the battle of El Puig in 1237, where by legend Saint George appeared to help King James I of Aragon against the Muslim army. For a long time this huge work was given to Andrés Marzal de Sas. The museum now names its painter more cautiously as the Master of the Centenar, and scholars still debate whether Marzal painted it, shared the work with others, or shaped the style of a follower.

What the documents do record is Marzal's presence in Valencia from 1393 until about 1410. He came from the north, possibly from Sas van Gent in Flanders or from Saxony, and worked in partnership with local painters, first with Pere Nicolau in the 1390s. His one fully documented surviving work is a panel of Doubting Thomas in the museum of Valencia Cathedral. He is credited with bringing a northern European manner into the International Gothic painting of the Crown of Aragon, the union of kingdoms that included Valencia. In 1410 the city council granted him a pension because he had fallen ill and into poverty.