Saturday, October 09, 2010

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?






















Above, that's a dragon...though it's a little hard to see.




While researching Uccello and the Renaissance for my previous post, I came across a lot of pictures of St. George and the Dragon. I was surprised to find that most artists had trouble with it. You'd think that after painting all those nativity scenes, they'd have been chomping at the bit to try an adventure theme, and maybe they were, but not this particular one. They just couldn't get a handle on it. Odd, isn't? I thought it might be fun to see if we could figure out why.

Above are modern depictions of the famous fight. Nowadays we seem to take a Marvel comics or UFC view of it. That's okay, but I suspect there was a lot of subtext in the original stories, and I don't see any of that here.

A lot of pictures depict the dragon as being small (above), about the size of a puma. That's odd. I'd have thought they'd want a creature as big as a T-Rex.  Maybe the dragon was supposed to be related to the normal-sized serpent that tempted Eve. Maybe the beast was small to focus our attention on St. George, and what he represented.


Big creatures (above) don't work. The idea that a knight could kill a creature bigger than a house is just too implausible. 


Here's (above) a 19th Century picture showing St. George fighting a creature that's the same size as a Komodo Dragon. George is so much bigger...you almost feel sorry for the poor animal. 

We see the girl who was being saved. She appears almost as big as George, even though she's in the background. I'll bet the client insisted on that. 


Here's a modern gold sovereign that portrays the fight as a Greek myth. You have to admit that the story does feel Greek and no doubt some Renaissance artists treated it that way....

 ...but that (above) seems to trivialize it. Making St. George out to be a Greek hero like Hercules can't be right.

Even when Rubens does it....and does it impressively....the idea of treating St. George exclusively as a hero seems lacking.


Some artists tried to improve on the story. Here (above) the knight, the horse and the dragon all appear to be dead. They gave it their all, and this is the tragic aftermath.  Nice, but it's a big deviation.


Above, the work by the only artist who got it right, in my opinion....Raphael. Only he realized that St. George was a story about hope.

That's a virtue that you can only understand when facing adversity. I'll bet the story originated in the Dark Ages when warlords ravaged Europe and a lot of ordinary people must have wondered if life was worth living. From the pulpits came the admonition to hope. Despair was labled an unforgivable sin. St. George would have been a symbol of the fight that has to be waged against barbarism in the outside world, and a symbol for the fight against despair in the inside world. Heroism, yes, but in the service of hope.

Raphael's style was perfect  for this. A too realistic picture would have turned the fight into an adventure. The iconic black knight on a white horse fighting a black dragon puts it squarely in the realm of hyper reality and myth in the grand style. It fires our imaginations. It makes us want to be brave like the figure in the picture.

16 comments:

Steven M. said...

Black knight on white horse just doesn't seem right to me, but fantastic nevertheless.

Anonymous said...

It's fascinating that every artist had their own interpretation of the myth, all of which were going in different extremes. And I agree, any creature (yes, even a fire breathing bunny) that is the size of a small house would have made small work of St. George. (cwatididthar?)

For me, I would have imagined the dragon being the size of a draft horse or a large grizzly bear, while the knight could have been somewhere between 5ft 9 or 6ft 2.

From an aspiring animator/cartoonist

Paul Penna said...

Glad you put up the British sovereign image, it's always been one of my favorite coin designs. It dates back to 1818, the work of engraver Benedetto Pistrucci (1783-1855).

Jorge Garrido said...

I actually wrote and directed a short film based on this, Beowulf (just the story of Grendel), and The Green Knight combined (and some American Indian myths) a few months ago, but set in a small Canadian mining town, to 90s emo music. I quite liked the song in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OlUdcniFH4

I thought the subtext of the story is that St. George is the only one who knows you have to confront evil the world, whereas the townspeople try to appease it, or live by giving into to its demands.

By gaining understanding of the beast, by learning about it, George makes it docile. The Princess leads him on a leash, like a dog. He and she have tamed the beast. The townspeople acted through ignorance and moral uncertainty. When the Knight slays the dragon, he has done so through understanding and moral clarity.

The townspeople don't even believe in evil. They don't believe in the devil.

Jorge Garrido said...

Also, I forgot to say that I like the tragic version of the story best, although in my version the knight slays the dragon, and then the townspeople convince the princes that the knight is the new dragon, so they manipulate her to kill the knight. after she does so they kill her.

Aaronphilby said...

coolness

Aaronphilby said...

This kid has your mouth, by the way.kid

Lester Hunt said...

You really wonder what some of these artists were thinking of. Why depict a dragon the size of a large poodle? Maybe they were "speaking" a visual "language" that I just don't understand.

thomas said...

Nice post

Uccello's St. George and the dragon(s), are pretty weird.
Do they fit in with what you're saying about the Raphael? The dragons in The two Uccelo paintings are not realistic at all. One of them looks like a person in costume.

speaking of that....

fritzlangdragon

pappy d said...

The dragon should be large enough that it would take at least 4 oxen to pull it on a cart.

In the version Jorge alludes to, St. George calls to the maiden to throw him her girdle. Once he has tied it around the dragon's neck, she can lead it around like a puppy. The psychosexual metaphor is that the chaos can be tamed in the union of bride & groom. Darkness (St. George in black armor) & light (the princess in white dressed as a bride for the sacrifice) coexisting; male & female.

But the story isn't "St. George & the Dragon & the Maiden".

Coming to us as a Christian myth, this philosophically dualistic ending won't do. It isn't triumphalist enough. The monster must be annihilated. George & the princess return to the city with their new pet & the townsfolk panic at the sight of the dragon. St. George tells them to calm down & if they all convert to the true faith, he will slay the dragon. They do, he does & the carcass is drawn & quartered & hauled out of town on ox carts by the 4 city gates, north, south, east & west. This is to prevent sequels being made. A dead dragon is a figure of the triumph of good over evil, at least from the townsfolk's point of view. The victory belongs to God the Father. The goddess will still be venerated as the Virgin & a church is built on the spot where the dragon was executed.

Jorge has adapted the story once again to fit our own popular mythos. As the neoconservative philosopher king Leo Strauss has pointed out, this guiding philosophy is laid out in the series, "Gunsmoke".

Sorry for the long comment.

Jorge Garrido said...

paddy, it made me think about westerns, too.

Jack G. said...

Not related to this post at all-

I know the version of blogger has bugs, but I can't find anything on your blog right now.

I'm looking for any post that has your drawings in it. Can you help at all?

When did you post that funny bit when your friend tried to act "subtle" when he spotted a girl?

You should consider using tags on your posts. If I like a post, I click on the tag and get similar posts with that tag.

Sorry about the rant. But I can't find anything with the way your blog is set up at the moment (again, it's not all your fault).

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Jack: Aaargh! You're right, I should have tagged everything. I'll start soon, and try to add tags to past posts! I can't help you with the date of the post about eating lunch with Mike. If I come across it, maybe I'll make a sidebar link to it.

Pappy: An interesting comment, which was not too long at all. I hadn't heard the story about dragging the monster's remains to the four corners of the city.

I take the story of St. George seriously, even if it is fiction. I wish a depiction had been on the walls of the church my family attended when I was a kid.

Aaron: Haw! That kid does have a noble chin! Thanks for the link. Maybe he and I can do a video together, like I did with Jim Arnold (That film is on the sidebar of the blog).

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Thomas: Interesting, but in my opinion Ingmar Bergman did a better dragon sequence in the "Magic Flute" film.

Jorge: Holy Cow! You're ambitious! Sounds interesting but I forgot to listen to the link. I'll get it when I finish here!

Paul: That IS a beautiful coin!

Lester: I'm sure there was a good reason for the length. My guess was that the dragon was supposed to have had a connection with the serpent that tempted Eve, but that was just a guess.

Bruce: What does cwatididthar mean?

Rooni: Jason and the argonauts sold me on the idea of black armour.

Jack G. said...

I found what I was looking for (took some googling). It turns out it was a dinner with Mike F. (not a lunch).

Still, that was too much work. So here's hopping Beta Blogger (or whatever it is) gets better. But I'd still consider the tags (would help all of us, I think).

pappy d said...

Your connection with the serpent in the garden is interesting! For his wickedness God curses the snake to slither on his belly. The dragon with legs & wings could be a figure of the original Tempter in Eden.

I like Raphael's painting best too, for his ungimmicky staging. Assuming that the the version of the exhausted George is late 1800's, it depicts an Industrial Age knight in shining armor, which reflects both light & shadow. He has conquered his own nature (with prayer & cold showers?). He's victorious but solitary. The Victorian princess is nowhere to be seen, probably locked in a tower for virginity's sake.