Andy Warhol (Paolo Uccello, George and the Dragon, 1460) Portfolio (F & S II.324-327) For Sale

The final portfolio in Warhol’s Details of Renaissance Paintings series, in St George and the Dragon, executed in 1984, the Pop artist re-imagines an illustration of the Golden Legend as painted in the fifteenth century by Paolo Uccello in vivid colour. 

 Each of the four screenprints depicts the Princess in profile, facing the magnificent wings of the Dragon. A formal feature that is scene throughout the Details of Renaissance Paintings, Warhol has cropped significant parts of the scene: in this case, the titular Saint George who slays the dragon. His absence, emphasised by the title, and anonymous princess who appears instead, rewrite an originally patriarchal, Christian and militaristic legend. Such feminist interpretations are fitting for other examples in Details of Renaissance Paintings, as Warhol similarly empowered Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus by freeing her from her mythic surroundings.  

 The four prints then, take on an entirely new personality, one that places the female at the fore and boldly dispels the original storytelling of a legend that has historically focussed on male chivalry.