Details Of Renaissance Paintings (Paolo Uccello, St. George And The Dragon, 1460) (F. & S. II.325)

Uccello's St George and the Dragon (c.1470, National Gallery, London) is one of the most compositionally singular works of the early Renaissance — a scene of mythological combat rendered with an obsessive geometric precision that makes it read as diagram as much as narrative. Warhol, making this print in the last year of his life, extracted the painting's most dynamically charged element: the collision between lance and dragon.

The composition abandons St George almost entirely. The dragon dominates: orange-amber, segmented, physically massive, its tail curling at the upper edge. At the far left, a small crowned figure stands in pale profile — the princess, the narrative pretext for the combat, reduced to a white silhouette against the blazing crimson ground.

The palette — deep crimson, amber-orange, teal, gold — operates at maximum intensity throughout, the ground speckled with cyan brushwork that gives the surface a textile-like richness. It is among the most purely decorative works in the Renaissance Paintings series, and one of the most visually extravagant things Warhol produced in any medium.