Saint George and the Dragon
Odilon Redon
ODILON REDON, c.1910. OIL ON PAPERBOARD.
The action is obscured but the glory remains. Depicting the climax of the legend that sees the venerated soldier Saint George slay a dragon that has been terrorising either a British, Cappadocian, or Libyan city, depending what version of the legend you listen to, Redon pushes the violence and gore of the killing to the edge and shrouds it in the mist of oil paint. Instead, the work functions first as a landscape, with the Christian narrative serving as adornment to a beach scene at sunset. Yet the scene is not short on drama – the firey red of the sun bounces off the greens and blues of a selling sea that seems to defy gravity. Clouds bloom overhead like plumes of smoke and the whole image seems to be participating in an act of pathetic fallacy. Redon commemorated St. Georges act of bravery by basking him in the glory of the natural world, not focusing on the act of violence he commits.