St. George with head of the dragon

The mounted saint, after the fight

The saint on horseback is one of the most fixed and public arrangements in European imagery: an armed rider, a dragon, and a conflict resolved in the rider's favour. What this title records is the aftermath rather than the action. The dragon is reduced to a head in the saint's possession, which is the iconography of a trophy, and the horse's function changes accordingly. In the combat version the animal is engaged and at risk; in the aftermath version it is a plinth, and the picture works the way an equestrian portrait works — a man raised, and visibly in command of what carries him.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1515 as the date of creation and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna as the location. The dimensions are 74 x 49 cm. Northern Renaissance is the recorded style and German the nationality attached to the painter. The record files the work under Animal Art > Horse and adds cultural heritage, mythology, fantasy and religion headings, and the measured colour family of the image is brown.

Six saints, one register

Six titles in this catalogue name this saint, with dates running from 1460 to 1915, and they are not variations of one picture: some show the fight, some the aftermath, and one is filed with the abstract-art headings. The subject is a fixed convention that each period rebuilt, and this register keeps them apart by function rather than merging them by name.