Recognising saints: dragon

Saint George, a Christian knight, saved a city which was being terrorised by a dragon. Here he charges the beast, who crouches on a grisly collection of bloody bones. The princess, who was to be its next meal, makes a hasty escape on the left.Although ostensibly a history painting, it is the land...

Gustave Moreau was a leading figure in the French Symbolist movement. He completed this painting in 1889, although he began working on it many years earlier.The story of Saint George and the dragon had long been popular with artists, and the painting shows Moreau’s awareness of earlier images of...

Saint George plunges his lance into the jaws of the dragon which, according to legend, inhabited the lake outside the city of Lydda in the Holy Land. He has arrived just in time to save the princess, who had been presented as a sacrifice to the creature. The dead body of one of the dragon’s earli...