.jpg)
.jpg)
St. George and the Dragon
Matthew Ryan
1110 x 825 mm
Oil and Gold Leaf on Wood
Although this work is not for sale, Matthew Ryan is available on commission for a wide range of artistic briefs large or small. Please contact the gallery to discuss.
This monumental work uses the materials, techniques and artistic philosophy of the early Renaissance to produce a homage to 15th century Flemish and Italian paintings of St. George.
However, here St. George’s armour is English, based on the tomb effigy of Sir Humphrey Stafford in St. John the Baptist Church Bromsgrove, with its coronet and its recess under the pit of the arm, which was believed to have been used for steadying a lance.
Like many artists of the Early Renaissance he uses a live model as a basis for his figure; in this case the war journalist Nick Allen, here assuming the attitude of grim determination necessary for slaying a creature that here is depicted as such an immense force of darkness.
George's stead was also partly based on life, and on the horse of the fresco of St. George by Cosimo Tura in Ferrara Cathedral, producing a stallion in the throes of battle rage and terror.
The background is a variant of the "plateau landscape" often favoured by many Flemish and Italian artists of the time including Jan van Eyck and Leonardo da Vinci; most famously in Leonardo's Mona Lisa. This uses a high foreground falling away to a valley in the middle ground to create a sweeping panorama with hills in the distance. Notice also the artist's use here of aerial perspective first developed during this period, where the dark blue of the sky in the foreground gradually transitions to a pale blue on the horizon, thereby describing a natural phenomenon.
This painting is used as The Medieval Gallery's logo and hanging sign, as it not only embodies the ethos of this gallery, both in its style and execution, but also commemorates the building's former life as an Inn called The George, which dates back to at least the 15th Century.