George Mayer-Marton: Mosaic of St Clare and font
Title: Mosaic of St Clare and font
Artist: George Mayer-Marton (1897–1960)
Location: St Clare, Blackley
Date: 1958
George Mayer-Marton’s work in mosaic for the Franciscan church of St Clare, Blackley, is one of several commissions the artist produced for the Roman Catholic church in the north-west of England, but only one of three that survive. The shimmering Byzantine-style mosaic of St Clare of Assisi on the east wall depicts the saint in a Tuscan landscape, wearing the Franciscan habit. Early accounts had the saint receiving a crown from the Virgin on her deathbed; here it is Christ who holds out the crown and blesses her as the Holy Spirit comes down on all three. In her hands, Clare holds what looks like a candlestick (her Italian name, Chiara, means light), and, as if without noticing, she treads a scimitar underfoot. Both attributes refer to the miracle in which Clare prayed to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament to drive off an army of mercenaries, but where Counter-Reformation portrayals of the saint emphasise the monstrance in which the Eucharist, glowing miraculously, is kept, here it is the light itself that is the focus, which she guards carefully. The saint mediates between the green grass and the dazzling blues and whites of heaven, between earthly and eternal life, drawing the congregation towards her with her light, which is the presence of Christ in the Mass celebrated below.
For the octagonal font Mayer-Marton produced colourful mosaic panels of a fountain and a phoenix, fish, a monstrance and an orb. Exterior mosaics also designed by Mayer-Marton have now been lost.
George Mayer-Marton (1897–1960) was born into a Jewish family in Győr, Hungary. After studying in Vienna and Munich he settled in Vienna where he played a central role in interwar artistic production and the development of Modernist styles. He fled to the UK in 1938, setting up a new studio in St John’s Wood, which, along with most of his early works in oil, was destroyed by bombing in 1940. In 1945 he discovered that his parents and brother, who had stayed in Hungary, had been killed in the Holocaust. From 1952 he taught at the Liverpool College of Art, pioneering instruction in mural and mosaic. He received a number of commissions from the Catholic Church to create murals and mosaics for postwar churches and schools. His works, mostly in oil and watercolour, are held in a number of UK museums and galleries, including the V & A, London, the Walker Art Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland.
Further Information
Medium: Mosaic
Permanent display
See Mayer-Marton’s mosaics for St Clare’s on the Ecclesiart map here.
Other artworks in churches by George Mayer-Marton: Crucifixion mural and mosaic, Holy Rosary, Oldham; mosaic of the Pentecost, now in Chapel of Unity, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.
Other works in St Clare, Blackley: stained glass, Joseph Nuttgens; Stations of the Cross, David John.