St. George and the Dragon (c. 1530s): Art, History and Details

St. George and the Dragon (c. 1530s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Francesco Salviati (Italian, 1510–1563).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

According to a legend based on Greek myth, as Saint George passed through Libya, he rescued a king’s daughter who had been left as a sacrifice to placate a vicious dragon. In gratitude for being delivered from the monster’s tyranny, the king’s subjects converted to Christianity. Here George wears armor in the ancient style based on Roman sculpture. Classical armor in Renaissance art was reserved for elite male subjects as a sign of their virtue. As a military saint, George’s attire conveys his antiquity as an early Christian hero (died about AD 303), conferring on him a sense of Roman authority and gravity.

Object facts

• Title: St. George and the Dragon
• Date: c. 1530s
• Creator attribution: Francesco Salviati (Italian, 1510–1563)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk with red chalk, stumped
• Dimensions: Sheet: 30.3 x 43.2 cm (11 15/16 x 17 in.); Secondary Support: 43.3 x 55.1 cm (17 1/16 x 21 11/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1992.60

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "1991 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 6 (1992): 155-231.
• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79.
• "1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (1994): 143-218.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.