Saint George and the Dragon

c. 1506

Raphael

Artist, Marchigian, 1483 - 1520

A man on horseback drives a spear into a dragon in this nearly square drawing. Created with brown washes on darkened, tan paper, the scene emerges slowly, and many details are indistinct. The horse faces away from us angled to our left. Its front legs rear up and its head turned so we see it in profile. The rider braces against the stirrup we can see and plunges a spear into a serpentine dragon to our lower left. Some areas are defined with cream-white or charcoal-gray lines. For instance, white lines shape the rider’s clothing and delineate where the underside of the horse stands out against the background. The horse’s eyes, nose, and parted mouth are drawn in with gray. A tiny star mark is near the lower left corner of the sheet and an incomplete black stamp with initials is in the lower right.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    brush and brown ink heightened with white over black chalk, incised with stylus

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall (approximate): 24.5 x 20.3 cm (9 5/8 x 8 in.)

  • Accession

    1982.42.1

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Joannides 1983, no. 119

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Nicholas Lanier [1588-1666], London (Lugt 2886); Sir Peter Lely (Lugt 2092); Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery (sale, Sotheby's, London, 5-6, 9-10 July 1917, no. 354 (as Raphael Sanzio da Urbino?); anonymous British collector; NGA purchase via Sotheby's, London, in 1982.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1983

  • Raphael and America, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1983, no. 75, repro, p. 149, fig. 85.

2020

  • Raphael and His Circle: Prints and Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020, no cat.

Bibliography

1983

  • Knab, Eckhart, Erwin Mitsch, and Konrad Oberhuber. Raphael: Die Zeichnungen. Vienna, 1983: no. 129.

  • Brown, David Alan. Raphael and America. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1983: pp. 149-51, 196, note 133, figs. 85-87.

  • Joannides, Paul. The Drawings of Raphael, with a Complete Catalogue. Berkeley, 1983.

  • Shearman, John. "A Drawing for Raphael's 'Saint George.'" The Burlington Magazine 125 (January 1983): 22, 25.

Inscriptions

in unknown hand, lower right verso in brown ink: sesant[u] pecodedessego; on former mount: R U from vol 2nd N22

Wikidata ID

Q64620020

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