Warrior Fighting a Dragon (c. 1170–1180): Art, History and Details

Warrior Fighting a Dragon (c. 1170–1180) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This gilded copper medallion features an enameled representation of a youthful warrior fighting a winged dragon. As no inscription accompanies the scene, the young hero’s identity remains unknown. It may depict the Arthurian hero Tristan fighting the dragon of Ireland--an epic poem titled Tristan gained popularity at the Plantagenet court of Henry II in England shortly before the medallion was created.

Object facts

• Title: Warrior Fighting a Dragon
• Date: c. 1170–1180
• Culture: Anglo-Norman, England or France, Romanesque period, 12th century
• Type: Enamel
• Technique: gilded copper, champlevé enamel
• Dimensions: Diameter: 6.5 x 0.3 cm (2 9/16 x 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1951.546

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

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.