SCHMALZL, MAXIMILIAN. – Painter, lay brother of the Redemptorists, b. at Falkenstein (Bavaria), 7 July 1850, d. in the convent of Gars (Bavaria), 7 January 1930.
The tenth child of a large family, he first learned the art of painting and sculpture at Ratisbon, then at Munich, where he also attended the Higher Institute of Applied Arts. On 20 May 1872 he took the habit of the Redemptorists at Gars, making his profession on 20 July 1878 and devoting himself chiefly to art. Under Fr. G. Schober, liturgical editor of the Pustet House in Ratisbon, he was led to the decoration of liturgical books, his greatest glory. He illuminated a missal for Pius IX (1877), designed the floral alphabet for the Pustet missals and a vast number of engravings for the liturgical books of that house, which so pleased Bl. Pius X that he entrusted S. with the decoration of the Vatican liturgical books. S. prepared the sketches for the gradual in 1904–1906, for the antiphonal in 1908–12, and for the pontifical, which was never printed (preserved in the Vatican Library). He also frescoed various churches and designed cartoons for the decoration of others, to say nothing of his almost countless minor works. As a religious he was exemplary and virtuous. From 1924, owing to advanced age and failing health, he had to give up his beloved art. His artistic output met with great admiration for more than half a century, above all for the spirit of profound piety that pervades II.