St George Slaying the Dragon

St George Slaying the Dragon is an artwork that was created around 1470 by Paulo Uccello. The painting relates to the famous St. George myth and it features an armoured St. George on a white horse on the right side of the painting who uses his sword to slay a plague-carrying bat-like dragon.

He is saving a princess who is on the left and who uses a belt as a leash. The storm in the art indicates that there is divine intervention. The art is an allegory about the conversion of Christians. Paulo Uccello painted the art in Venice, Italy where he was restoring the San Marco's Byzantine Mosaics. He used a silver leaf and a gold leaf on a wood panel, tempera and oil on canvas for the artwork. The painting was done on a single piece of what the scientist refer to as a fine-weave cloth which he used for covering the panel as opposed to his previous works where he used several layers of clothing to cover the panel for his painting. The painting measurements are 62.2 × 38.8 cm.

He employed the technique of using coloured glazes. He used them over the silver and gold leaf. The wings and body of the dragon are painted using semi-transparent green places which can be seen over the gold leaf. In painting the St. George armour he used an opaque black glaze over the leaf. Paulo was also a good mathematician and in the painting, he used a lot of measurements whereby hexa-prong lines and radiating lines were used for stippled texture creation.

In this painting, he brought about the renaissance ideals of realism, individualism and secularism. The artwork shows depth and perspective bringing out the ideal of individualism while the shading and perspective used to do so shows the ideal of realism. St. George Slaying the Dragon was the first art that uses depth. The commissioning of the art was done by Count Lanckoronski and was housed in his residence located in Vienna, the Palais Lanckoronski. It was later sold by Anton, his son and heir, around the year 1959. Currently, the art is owned by the National Gallery of the United Kingdom located in London. Also, it is on display in the same gallery.