Paolo Uccello, 'Saint George and the Dragon', about 1470

Saint George and the Dragon

Paolo Uccello

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Saint George taming then slaying a dragon is one of the most fantastic saints‘ legends of the Middle Ages. Uccello has compressed two parts of the story into one small and strange picture. The saint plunges his spear into the head of a dragon, whose odd shape mirrors the entrance to his cave. An elegant, if bored-looking, princess already has a leash around its neck.

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.

Uccello was fascinated by single point perspective – using lines that lead to one point to create an illusion of depth within a painting – but he hasn’t quite mastered it here. The geometric patches of greenery recede towards the horizon, but the rectangular stones of the ground slope up to the right.

In-depth

Saint George and the dragon must be one of the most fantastic saints‘ legends to come down to us from the Middle Ages. According to the Golden Legend George was a Christian knight from Cappadocia, now in Turkey. One day he came to the city of Silene, in Libya, which was being terrorised by a dragon. This beast, having eaten all the available sheep, was being fed children, drawn by lot from both rich and poor. The lot eventually fell on the king’s daughter, who was dressed as a bride and delivered to the place where the dragon lived.

George, passing by on his horse, asked her why she was weeping. When the dragon appeared George attacked, but rather than killing it he told the princess to tie her belt around its neck and lead it to the city. There he promised the terrified citizens he would kill it if they all converted to Christianity. They hastily agreed, and George struck off the dragon’s head.

Paolo Uccello has compressed two parts of the story into one small and distinctly strange painting. The saint on his prancing charger plunges his spear into the head of an oddly triangular dragon, whose shape mirrors the entrance to his cave; the elegant, but rather bored-looking, princess already has a leash around its neck. A crescent moon perhaps suggests that this is taking place as day changes into night, a transitional and therefore especially magical time. Everything about the picture, from the strange spiralling cloud to the odd landscape, makes this a scene from fantasy rather than the real world. Even the horse is also more dreamlike than lifelike: its neck is unnaturally curved, its hooves oddly angular, and its eyes and nostrils set too far forward in its head.

We don’t know precisely who this painting was done for, or when it was painted, but its small scale and non-religious feel – it’s more about a magical adventure than Christian virtue – suggest it was intended for use in someone’s home, perhaps in a bedroom. Saint George was very popular throughout Italy. Two other versions of this story by Uccello and his workshop survive, one in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the other Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris. The style is quite close to Uccello’s Hunt in the Forest (now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and the princess’s clothes – look at her fantastic pointed shoes – seem to date from around 1460. But the saint’s armour looks rather earlier, and is similar to that worn by the knights in Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, although less detailed. Perhaps Uccello was drawing it from memory, or just simplified it to suit a much smaller picture. Although Uccello was very interested armour and battle manoeuvres, he has adjusted reality for the sake of visual effect. George holds his lance incorrectly, so that it can line up with the dragon’s wing and the clouds, and his arm is bent up the wrong way.

Uccello was fascinated by linear perspective – using lines to create an impression of three-dimensional space within a painting – as you can also see in Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano. It was a relatively recent discovery at that time, and he has not quite mastered it here. The imagined lines go in different directions rather than receding to a single point, making the painting quite confusing to look at. The geometric patches of greenery lead towards a distant horizon – where you can just make out the walls of a city – but the strangely rectangular stones of the ground all slope up to the right. The spiralling cloud in the top right balances the curving depths of the dragon’s cave, drawing our eyes in different directions. The various vanishing points contribute to the sense of the magical and marvellous.

The painting was perhaps made quite rapidly and cheaply. It’s in oil on canvas, and contains no expensive pigments or gilding. The canvas support might even have been reused: infrared reflectograms show a curved geometric shape underneath the drawing for the princess’s dress, perhaps traces of an earlier heraldic design, which was possibly never completed and was covered with an extra layer of priming below the paint surface.

There are several differences between the underdrawing and the final painted version. The princess’s hands, her crown and the front of her dress were all altered, the cave has changed shape and George’s lance has been narrowed or moved up a bit. Some of the pigments have changed colour, especially the greens and blue – so the sky, which is azurite, looks greener than it would have been originally, and the green grasses are darker (there is a trace of the original colour along the bottom, where the paint has been protected by the frame). The green of the princess’s clothing has darkened while her red overdress has faded, so that she is now less colourful than she was originally. The strange pink ground also appears in Uccello’s Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano. The painting originally had blue painted borders, quite a common feature of early canvas paintings.

In 1939 the painting was stolen by Nazis from its then owner, Count Karol Lanckoronski, and kept in the salt mines at Alt Ausee or possibly in the Immendorf Castle, with other works destined for the Hitler Museum. It was later recovered by the American army, and was bought by the National Gallery in 1959.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Saint George and the Dragon
Artist: Paolo Uccello
Artist dates: about 1397 - 1475
Date made: about 1470
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 55.6 × 74.2 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought with a special grant and other contributions, 1959
Inventory number: NG6294
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 15th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

First recorded in the collection of Count Karol Lanckoroński (1848–1933) in Vienna in 1898. In 1939 it was stolen by the Nazis from the Lanckoroński house in Jacquingasse, Vienna, and kept in saltmines in Alt Aussee or in the Immendorf Castle (destined for the Hitler Museum in Linz); subsequently recovered by the American army and placed in the Collecting Point in Munich; for some time housed in Hohenems Castle, and kept in a bank in Zurich between 1946 and 1959. Purchased through Mr Farago from Count Lanckoroński by special grant, with contributions from the Phillott and Temple-West Funds, 1959.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Dillian Gordon, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings’, vol. 1, London 2003; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2010

Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries

The National Gallery (London)

30 June 2010 - 12 September 2010
2020

Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

The National Museum of Western Art

18 June 2020 - 18 October 2020

The National Museum of Art

3 November 2020 - 31 January 2021
2021

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

National Gallery of Australia

5 March 2021 - 14 June 2021
2022

Masterpieces from the Lanckoroński collection

Wawel Royal Castle - State Art Collection

1 July 2022 - 2 October 2022

Bibliography

1898

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1900

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1901

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1909

B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 3rd edn, London 1909
1923

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1923

P. Schubring, Cassoni: Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Fruhrenaissance: Ein Beitrag zur Profanmalerei im Quattrocento, Leipzig 1923
1930

L. Venturi, 'Paolo Uccello', L'arte, XXXIII, 1930
1932

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places, Oxford 1932
1934

V. Giovannozzi, 'Note su Giovanni di Francesco', Rivista d'arte, 1934
1935

G. Puldelko, 'Der Meister der Anbetung in Karlsruhe: Ein Schuler Paolo Uccellos', in Das siebente Jahrzehnt: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Adolph Goldschmidt, Berlin 1935, pp. 123-30
1938

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1939

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1940

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1946

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1946

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1950

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1956

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1957

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1958

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1959

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1959

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1960

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1961

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1972

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1974

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1978

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1979

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1980

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1980

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1982

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1986

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1986

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1989

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1989

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1989

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1990

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1991

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1991

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1992

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1994

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1995

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1995

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1996

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1996

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1996

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1998

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1998

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2001

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2003

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About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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Not on display