Bronze St. George the Dragon Slayer Statue

Product Information

Scholars of this time may also have influenced Donatello's choice of subject for the guild's niche. Scholars of the fifteenth century were extremely interested in educating and providing a good example for young Florentine men. Widely regarded as troublemakers and difficult to tame, the young men of Florence often married late and spent much of their youth getting into various scrapes. Our cultural heritage needs to be looked after by people who are qualified and trained. We need to know our heritage as throughly as possible to protect it, and we need to be alert. The alarm in this case was raised by somebody in the town telling us what had happened.” the pairing of the two holy dragon-slayers has no narrative source, and the symbolic meaning of the scene is spelled out in an inscription written on both sides of the central cross, which compares the victory of the two saints over the dragon to Christ's triumph over evil on the cross." Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 46, color repro.

Imperial Hermitage Museum [probably Ernst von Münnich, ed.] "Catalogue raisonné des tableaux qui se trouvent dans les Galeries, Sallons et Cabinets du Palais Impérial de S. Pétersbourg, commencé en 1773 et continué jusqu’en 1785.” 3 vols. Manuscript, Fund 1, Opis’ VI-A, delo 85, Hermitage Archives, Saint Petersburg,1773-1783 (vols. 1-2), 1785 (vol. 3). Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, 1973: 22, 25 repro. Where Donatello's style was groundbreaking and based on reality, Ghiberti adhered to the International Gothic style, which dictated highly stylized and "perfect" versions of flesh-and-blood individuals.Saint George and the Dragon, one of two versions of the theme by the artist, belonged to a series of miniature panels that Raphael painted in Florence for the celebrated court of Urbino. A Roman soldier of Christian faith, Saint George saved the daughter of a pagan king by subduing a dragon with his lance; the princess then led the dragon to the city, where the saint killed it with his sword, prompting the king and his subjects to convert to Christianity. Many of Donatello’s greatest masterpieces were done in bronze. One of his early independent commissions was his first bronze relief, The Feast of Herod (1427), which was created for the baptistery of San Giovanni in the Siena Cathedral. The relief portrays the dramatic moment in which Herod is stunned by the severed head of Saint John the Baptist. The figures in the relief express intense emotional responses that help build up the tension of the dramatic scene. By adding architectural elements to the composition, Donatello demonstrated his knowledge and command of a linear perspective. Loomis, C. Grant, 1949. White Magic, An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge: Medieval Society of America) Donatello carved his statue of St. George for the guild of armorers and swordmakers in Florence. Like the statue of St. Mark, the statue of St. George was destined for the guild’s niche in the building of Orsanmichele. Because the guild was of average size, it could only afford a statue of marble, rather than of bronze.

One of Donatello’s long-standing relationships was with the Medici family: from 1433 to 1443, he made decorations for San Lorenzo, the Medici Church. This commission included ten large reliefs in colored stucco and two sets of small bronze doors. In this period, he also created the bronze statue of David (ca. 1440), the first large scale free-standing nude statue of the Renaissance. Documents show that the statue was placed at the center of the Medici Palace courtyard in 1496. Incidentally, the St. George was not the only statue that Donatello produced for a niche in the Orsanmichele. He also sculpted the St. Mark for the linen drapers guild of Florence, an equally beautiful and meticulously crafted work of art.Fernando Carrera, a spokesperson for ACRE, tells AFP the St. George sculpture’s pastel makeover is just “the tip of the iceberg of so many cases that don’t appear in the press.” Indeed, it’s worth noting that the story was just one of several botched restoration attempts to come to light last year: In September, for example, a local shopkeeper painted a trio of 15th-century religious figures in bright shades of fuchsia, turquoise and magenta, leading ACRE to once more denounce “this continued plunder in our country.”