Saint George and the Dragon

Tempera on panelBernat Martorell (Spanish, active from 1427–died 1452)/1434–35

Description

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 surface of the painting as well: He richly modeled George’s halo and armor and the scaly body of the dragon with raised gesso decoration, and he gave granular texture to the depiction of the sandy foreground. Saint George and the Dragon was the central panel of an altarpiece devoted to the saint and was originally surrounded by four smaller narrative panels showing his martyrdom (now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris). Martorell probably painted the altarpiece for the chapel of the Barcelona palace of the government of Catalonia, a region whose patron is Saint George.

Provenance

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 of her three executors correspond to the executors mentioned in the confused account of the painting’s sale in Sanpere y Miquel 1906, vol. 1, p. 195, vol. 2, p. 275 [see Macías and Cornudella 2011-2012, pp. 21-22 for the family relationships and likely transmission]. Don José Ferrer-Vidal i Soler, Barcelona, by 1906, until 1917 [Sanpere y Miquel 1906, vol. 1, p. 194, see also Macías and Cornudella 2012, p. 22 and Sánchez Sauleda 2014, p. 429]; sold by him to Charles Deering, Marycel, Sitges, near Barcelona, and Chicago, in 1917 [see Sánchez Sauleda 2014]; the painting was placed on loan at the Art Institute in 1921; loan agreement, Nov. 18, 1921, Art Institute Archives]; given to his daughters, Marion Deering McCormick and Barbara Deering Danielson, 1924 [Art Institute Archives]; given by them to the Art Institute, 1933.

Dimensions

155.6 × 98.1 cm (61 1/4 × 38 5/8 in.)

Source

The Art Institute of Chicago

Movement / Period

Renaissance

Accession No

15468

Official Citations

[The Art Institute of Chicago Official Record][Full Resolution Image]

Curatorial Affinity Stream

Continuing the Universe of Bernat Martorell (Spanish, active from 1427–died 1452)

Renaissance • Spain • Harmonious Works & Contemporaries

Continuous Discovery