Wednesday, September 8, 2010

St. George is killing the Dragon

St. George is killing the Dragon
acrylic, epoxy, colored embossed aluminum, pen
acrylic gems

wikipedia:
Saint George and the dragon

The episode of St George and the Dragon was a legend[24] brought back with the Crusaders and retold with the courtly appurtenances belonging to the genre of Romance. The earliest known depiction of the legend is from early eleventh-century Cappadocia, (in the iconography of the Eastern Orthodox Church, George had been depicted as a soldier since at least the seventh century); the earliest known surviving narrative text is an eleventh-century Georgian text.

In the fully developed Western version, which developed as part of the Golden Legend, a dragon or Crocodile makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of "Silene" (perhaps modern Cyrene) in Libya or the city of Lydda, depending on the source. Consequently, the citizens have to dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time, to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon at first a sheep, and if no sheep can be found, then a maiden must go instead of the sheep. The victim is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happens to be the princess. The monarch begs for her life to be spared, but to no avail. She is offered to the dragon, but there appears Saint George on his travels. He faces the dragon, protects himself with the sign of the cross,[25] slays the dragon, and rescues the princess. The grateful citizens abandon their ancestral paganism and convert to Christianity.

The dragon motif was first combined with the standardised Passio Georgii in Vincent of Beauvais' encyclopedic Speculum historale and then in Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, which guaranteed its popularity in the later Middle Ages as a literary and pictorial subject.

The parallels with Perseus and Andromeda are inescapable. In the allegorical reading, the dragon embodies a suppressed pagan cult.[26] The story has other roots that predate Christianity. Examples such as Sabazios, the sky father, who was usually depicted riding on horseback, and Zeus's defeat of Typhon the Titan in Greek mythology, along with examples from Germanic and Vedic traditions, have led a number of historians, such as Loomis, to suggest that George is a Christianized version of older deities in Indo-European culture.

In the medieval romances, the lance with which St George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, named after the city of Ashkelon in Israel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George

fineartamerica abstract artworks

season paintings on fineartamerica

bneach paintings on fineartamerica

mindscape art on fineartamerica

abstract landscape paintings on fineartamerica

ink paintings on fineartamerica

blue paintings on fineartamerica

abstract digital paintings on fineartamerica

abstract mixed media on fineartamerica

digital fractal paintings on fineartamerica

digal and mixed media paintings on fineartamerica

fractal paintings on fineartamerica