Saint George

Dosso Dossi, court painter to the Este dukes of Ferrara and one of the most inventive colourists of the north Italian Renaissance, painted this Saint George about 1513–15, early in a career spent largely in the service of Alfonso I and Ercole II d’Este. The little panel belongs to the years in which the young Ferrarese painter was absorbing the soft, atmospheric colour of Giorgione and the Venetians and fusing it with the fantasy and decorative richness prized at the Este court — the combination that would make his reputation as the most poetic painter of the Ferrarese school. The saint’s legend, which had been a favourite of northern Italian patrons for a century, here receives the dreamy, landscape-laden treatment typical of his early manner. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.