My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
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Saint George
| Artist | Raphael |
|---|---|
| Year | c. 1503–1505 |
| Medium | Oil on wood |
| Dimensions | 31 cm × 27 cm (12 in × 11 in) |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
This painting reminds me of a famous quote you may have heard before:
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton
There was a time, not that long ago, when the line between history and fairy tales were a little bit blurry. One of those tales resonated in hearts across a lot of the world and involved the real person, known by history as Saint George. Did he really slay a dragon? The answer to that not very long ago was an easy “no” however with the way the 2020s are transpiring so far, perhaps we’ll learn that there really was a time of dragons in our not distant past.
Did Raphael really believe that Saint George slew a dragon? Perhaps he did. Either way, a lot of places around the world adopted St. George’s flag – symbol synonymous with dragon-slaying. St. George’s cross is the national flag of England, Georgia, Genoa, dozens of European cities, and even more often it is used as a military symbols or as part of heraldry. Saint George became famous across Europe during the Crusades as a warrior saint and his cross was used by the Knights Templar.
The story beneath the symbol gives it power as a symbol.
All of that said, I really enjoy the painting. It’s both colorful and imaginative in a fun way. Even if Raphael believed the story about the slaying of the dragon as a true account, it is unlikely he actuall saw a dragon personally. His depiction is based upon oral accounts passed down over centuries. The sooty-looking, serpentine, dog-faced creature is contrasted with George, in gleaming armor, riding a beautiful white horse.
I like how unnatural the dragon seems to be. The combat is happening under a blue sky, with a beautiful verdant backdrop. We even have a beautiful woman pictured in the background, watching on from a distance. The evil isn’t normalized. It stands out in this setting, strikingly, as being out of place in the world. George’s actions restore nature back to its rightful order.
(more on the painting, via wiki)
Saint George or Saint George and the Dragon is a small painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, executed c. 1503–1505. It is housed in the Louvre in Paris. A later version of the same subject is the Saint George and the Dragon in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
History
This painting and the equally small Saint Michael, also in the Louvre, are a pair. In the Mazarin Collection they were joined together, forming a diptych, and bound in leather. Louis XIV acquired them from Cardinal Mazarin’s heirs in 1661.
The Saint George has sometimes been ascribed to the artist’s Roman period, because the horse resembles one of the horses of Monte Cavallo (the Quirinal Palace). However, Raphael could easily have known this particular horse from a drawing of it, done by one of Leonardo‘s pupils. To judge by the still somewhat naïve and Peruginesque style of the painting, it is really one of Raphael’s early works, dating from about 1504. He produced another painting of the same subject a little later (the aforementioned panel in Washington D.C.), and towards the end of his life he painted a large Saint Michael which is also in the Louvre.
Giovanni Lomazzo, in his Trattato della Pittura (1584), mentions a Saint George by Raphael, commissioned by the Duke of Urbino, which was painted on a “little chess-board” (tavoliere). According to the old catalogues the small Saint Michael, if not the Saint George as well, had a draughts-board on the back which is now covered over. Examination by means of X-rays and infrared has not confirmed this statement. In the abovementioned book, Lomazzo seems to have confused various pictures of the same subject. If one can rely to some extent on his late and somewhat muddled testimony, it is possible that the two paintings in the Louvre were painted for the Duke of Urbino.
