Paolo Uccello
The story of Saint George taming and then slaying a dragon was loved in the Middle Ages. Here, Paolo Uccello, one of the masters of the Florentine Renaissance, has compressed two parts of the story into one small and quite strange picture. The saint plunges his spear into the head of a dragon, whose odd shape mirrors the entrance to his cave. The dragon has the wings of a butterfly, and he looks a bit like a cartoon character. An elegant, and bored-looking, princess already has a leash around its neck. Everything is happening in a weird scenery; this is how I imagine a nightmare of a gardener, a place with such an irregular lawn.
We don’t know who this painting was for, but its small scale and non-religious feel (it’s more about a magical adventure than Christian virtue) suggest it was intended for someone’s home. It was relatively cheap to make; it’s in oil on canvas and contains no expensive pigments or gilding.
P.S. How many differences (or similarities) can you spot in this Orthodox take on Saint George and the Dragon?
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