Vittore Carpaccio
St. George Killing the Dragon

This picture is painted with oil on canvas. It consists of the main picture, which is over two metres high and almost two metres wide, and four small rectangular scenes at the bottom of the painting.

The main picture shows St George fighting the dragon in the centre in front of a mountainous landscape.

The saint gallops up from the right on his brown horse. He is sitting in a red saddle with golden studs, the red reins are taut. George is wearing shining silver armour and a sword with a golden hilt hanging from his hip in a red scabbard. His head with its long blond curls is unprotected and surrounded by a narrow halo.

Georg holds a lance in his right hand, which he uses to pierce the dragon's open maw. The greenish mythical creature has an elongated mouth full of sharp teeth, short muscular limbs with long claws and small wings. The dragon stands on its hind legs, its strong neck bent backwards. Blood drips from its mouth and flows from the wound on the back of its head over its back onto the ground.

A human foot with lower leg, an upper body with head and human and animal skulls lie scattered on the sparsely overgrown ground.

In the centre of the right-hand edge of the picture, a praying woman kneels at a safe distance next to a leafy tree and observes the battle scene. The young woman is the king's daughter who was to be sacrificed to the dragon.

At the top right of the picture is a walled town with towers. To the left, on a hill, sheep crowd in front of a hut. A man in a red cloak is kneeling in front of the city gates. It is St Stephen, surrounded by people holding stones in their raised hands.

Two hermits are depicted between jagged rocks in the top left-hand corner of the picture. One is lying on the ground between half-height plants, the other is leaning against a moss-covered stone next to a cave entrance, reading.

The four small rectangular scenes along the lower edge of the picture show four martyrdoms of St George. According to tradition, like many Christian saints, he was tortured in order to persuade him to turn away from Christianity. The depictions are separated from the main picture and from each other by a painted stone frame. The first scene, for example, shows St George tied to a pillar. Two men wearing turbans are tearing wounds into his body with metal rods. In the neighbouring scene, George is being tortured in a cauldron with a fire burning underneath.

It's the crucial moment! Saint George heads straight towards the dragon and pierces the monster's throat with his lance. The danger to the city of Silena and its residents has passed, the Christian knight has triumphed. The remains of the dragon's earlier victims – humans and sheep alike – are still scattered across the ground. In the background on the right, huddled next to a tree and praying for a favourable outcome, is the princess, who was next in line to be sacrificed to the dragon.

Behind her, outside the gates of a substantial city, another legend from the Christian story of salvation is playing out. Clad in a red cloak, Saint Stephen is kneeling on the ground, about to be stoned to death. 

And on the left, two hermits have withdrawn into the towering rocky landscape: Saint Jerome and Saint Benedict of Nursia. It was an obvious reference, since Carpaccio was painting this monumental scene for the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, which followed the Rule of Saint Benedict.

Saint George is also the protagonist in the four small scenes at the bottom. They show the ordeals the saint underwent before he was finally beheaded in the year 303 – at least according to Christian legends.

As to how realistic the story of the heroic dragon-slayer actually is – who's to say. But the battle against evil continues to inspire artists to this day. Please turn around and look at the opposite wall – or at your screen. This is the contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recreating Carpaccio's battle against the dragon – unmistakably, and yet hard to make out. Ai Weiwei mounted Lego bricks on aluminium and used this technique to, as it were, "pixelate" Carpaccio's masterpiece. Centuries-old fine brushwork meets contemporary digital aesthetics – but the main message remains the same: the importance of the battle of good against evil.

In this picture you can see Saint George. He rides straight towards the dragon and stabs it in the neck with his lance. In doing so he has defeated the dragon and saved the inhabitants of the city of Silena. On the ground you can still see the remains of the dragon's victims. The princess who is hiding behind a tree was also supposed to be sacrificed to the dragon. She prays for a good outcome to the fight.

In the background you can see a large city. In front of it another story from the Bible is taking place: a man in a red cloak is kneeling on the ground. The man is Saint Stephen. He is about to be stoned. On the left in the mountains we see two men: Jerome and Benedict of Nursia. Carpaccio painted this large picture for the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, which followed the rules of Saint Benedict.

Saint George is also depicted in the four small images below. The small images show how George suffered for his faith. George died and rose again three times before he was finally beheaded in 303.

The theme of the fight against the dragon – the fight between good and evil – continues to inspire artists to this day. Turn around and look at the opposite wall. Here you can see a modern representation of the theme. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recreated the image using Lego bricks and broke the motif down into lots of small coloured dots like pixels on a screen.