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The story of St. George taming and slaying a dragon was popular in the Middle Ages. In this work, Paolo Uccello, one of the masters of the Florentine Renaissance, has compressed the two parts of the story together into a small, strange frame. The sage thrusts his spear into the dragon’s head, and the dragon stands in a strange pose at the entrance of its cave. With butterfly-like wings, the dragon looks a bit like a cartoon character. An elegant, bored-looking princess has a rope tied around its neck. It’s all happening in an eerie landscape; there’s a lot of very irregular lawns that I feel like a gardener’s nightmare.
We don’t know for whom the painting was painted, but its small size and secular feel (it emphasizes a magical adventure rather than Christian virtues) suggest it was made to hang in someone’s home. And it was relatively cheap to make—it was an oil on canvas, and there was no expensive paint or gilding.
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Side note: How many differences (or similarities) can you spot in the Orthodox rendition of St. George and the Dragon ?
55.6 x 74.2 cm
Renaissance
National Gallery
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