Bronze St. George the Dragon Slayer Statue

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In 2012, a similarly botched restoration of this "Ecce Homo" painting attracted international attention

The statue was restored that same year, when Mgr Saviour Borg was archpriest; the scientific work of restoration and conservation was supervised by the Autieri Cinzia Restauri of Naples, with Fr Ugo Dovere in charge of the team. St. George is still a source of inspiration for millions, both Christian and non-Christian and his heroic feats are evidence of the strength of his faith in God and his determination to fight evil. Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, 1973: 22, 25 repro. To say that this statue is a masterpiece would be an understatement as different art pundits have praised the masterpiece since it's completion. Tasked to create the marble sculpture around 1413, Donatello beautifully carved the statue, and it was placed next to Saint Mark on a recess of the church in Orsanmichele.

I doubt much of the whole story of Saint George is anything more than one of the many versions of the old-world story of the conflict between Light and Darkness, or Ra and Apepi, and Marduk and Tiamat, woven upon a few slender threads of historical fact. Tiamat, the scaly, winged, foul dragon, and Apepi the powerful enemy of the glorious Sungod, were both destroyed and made to perish in the fire which he sent against them and their fiends: and Dadianus, also called the 'dragon', with his friends the sixty-nine governors, was also destroyed by fire called down from heaven by the prayer of Saint George. [5] Others, however, have been keen to find opportunity in adversity. The town of Borja managed to capitalise on the attention it drew after a devout parishioner, Cecilia Giménez, tried to restore the face of the scourged Christ that had been painted on the wall of a local church almost a century earlier.

Donatello carved his statue of St. George for the guild of armorers and swordmakers in Florence. Like the statue of St. Mark, the statue of St. George was destined for the guild’s niche in the building of Orsanmichele. Because the guild was of average size, it could only afford a statue of marble, rather than of bronze. defeating a dragon came to be know through the collection of stories called the Golden Legend in the late thirteenth century. Fernando Carrera, a spokesperson for ACRE, tells AFP the St. George sculpture’s pastel makeover is just “the tip of the iceberg of so many cases that don’t appear in the press.” Indeed, it’s worth noting that the story was just one of several botched restoration attempts to come to light last year: In September, for example, a local shopkeeper painted a trio of 15th-century religious figures in bright shades of fuchsia, turquoise and magenta, leading ACRE to once more denounce “this continued plunder in our country.” Many of Donatello’s greatest masterpieces were done in bronze. One of his early independent commissions was his first bronze relief, The Feast of Herod (1427), which was created for the baptistery of San Giovanni in the Siena Cathedral. The relief portrays the dramatic moment in which Herod is stunned by the severed head of Saint John the Baptist. The figures in the relief express intense emotional responses that help build up the tension of the dramatic scene. By adding architectural elements to the composition, Donatello demonstrated his knowledge and command of a linear perspective.

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Where Donatello's style was groundbreaking and based on reality, Ghiberti adhered to the International Gothic style, which dictated highly stylized and "perfect" versions of flesh-and-blood individuals. In the West, a Carolingian-era depiction of a Roman horseman trampling and piercing a dragon between two soldier saints with lances and shields was put on the foot of a crux gemmata, formerly in the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Servatius in Maastricht (lost since the 18th c.). The representation survives in a 17th-century drawing, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. For his garments, Donatello wears a plate skirt, a pair of boots, a chest cover, a cloak and a pair of gloves. His dressing is rather fascinating, considering he was about to confront the dragon. If you look keenly, you will realise that he appears to be holding something on his right hand. the pairing of the two holy dragon-slayers has no narrative source, and the symbolic meaning of the scene is spelled out in an inscription written on both sides of the central cross, which compares the victory of the two saints over the dragon to Christ's triumph over evil on the cross." National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 95, repro.