St. George and the Dragon (Raphael)

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St. George and the Dragon

Raphael, 1505-1506

Oil on wood

28,5 × 21,5 cm

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

St. George and the Dragon is a small painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, 1505-1506.

The St. Michael and St. George and the Dragon in the Louvre, and this St. George of the National Gallery of Washington, are bound together both by their subject - an armed youth fighting a dragon - and by stylistic elements. All three are assigned to the Florentine period of Raphael and echo those stimuli which the Urbinate received from the great masters who worked in Florence or whose paintings were visible there. The influence of Leonardo - whose fighting warriors from the Battle of Anghiari (1505) in the Palazzo della Signoria provided an extraordinary example of martial art (the painting deteriorated very rapidly because of shortcomings in Leonardo's experimental technique and so is no longer visible) - predominates in these works. But references to Flemish painting - particularly that of Hieronymus Bosch (the glaring light and humanoid monsters which populate the St. Michael are characteristic of Bosch) - suggest the environment of Urbino, where Northern influences were still quite vivid.

These small panels are indicative of a moment in which the painter gathers the stylistic fruits of what he has assimilated so far and, at the same time, poses pictorial problems which will be developed in the future.