1434
tempera
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Saint George and the Dragon is a 1434 tempera by Bernat Martorell, a Early Renaissance work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows Saint George on horseback, sword raised over a wounded dragon. The princess waits nearby while tiny creatures—maybe baby dragons—scurry near the beast’s cave. Behind them, the king and queen watch from a rocky ledge. Martorell packed the scene with gritty details: bones underfoot, a gnarled tree, and George’s heavy armor catching the light. The dragon looks more like a lizard than a fire-breather, with scaly skin and a long neck. If you like this mix of drama and detail, check out more works by Bernat Martorell.
As a model of Christian knighthood, Saint George was a popular figure in the Middle Ages. Artists most frequently represented the episode from his legend in which he slays a dragon and rescues a beautiful princess set to be sacrificed to the beast. The Catalan painter Bernat Martorell included a wealth of detail in his version of the story. Animal and human bones litter the foreground. Lizards—or perhaps baby dragons—crawl around the opening of the dragon’s cave. The princess’s parents and throngs of onlookers crowd the town’s battlements to view the action. Martorell enlivened the physical…
Probably commissioned for the chapel of Saint George, Palau de la Generalitat, Barcelona [Sobré in Wolff 2008]; Don Francesc de Sales de Rocabruna i Jordà, Baron of Albi, by 1867, died 1874 [lent by him to Barcelona 1867, along with the four lateral panels now in the Louvre, Paris, and a painting of the Virgin, probably the painting now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art]; when his estate was divided between his sister Maria Josepa de Rocabruna i Jordà (d. 1890) and his widow Josepa de Rocabruna i Pascual (died 1884), Saint George and the Dragon is likely to have passed to his widow, since two…
Barcelona, Academia de Bellas Artes, Exposición retrospectiva de obras de pintura, de escultura y artes suntuarias, 1867, nos. 2139–44. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections, June 1 - November 1, 1933, cat. 178 (ill.). Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections, June 1 - November 1, 1934, cat. 78. Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpiece of the Month, July 1939 (no cat.). The Art Institute of Chicago, New Light on Old…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Bernat Martorell was the leading painter of Barcelona, in modern-day Spain. He is considered to be the most important artist of the International Gothic style in Catalonia. Martorell painted retable panels and…
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