Sangre, dolor y muerte. Modos de representar la violencia de san Jorge sobre el dragón en la pintura catalano-aragonesa del siglo XV

Abstract

One of the most depicted hagiographic episodes in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain was that of Saint George slaying the dragon. Several Catalan-Aragonese altarpieces show a wide repertoire of violence against the beast, which is wounded, lacerated and crushed. Both in the contest, slaying and delivery of the corpse, the pictorial resources used create genuine staging with abundant vermin, rotting bodies, bones and blood. This paper aims to discuss the ways of representation of violence on the dragon’s corporality to exhibit the annihilation of evil in a set of 15th Century paintings. It will also understand them within the framework of the assiduous circulation of this iconography in the contemporary Western material culture, while the figure of the dragon began to acquire increasingly plausible features.

Keywords

• violence
• dragon
• Saint George
• pictorial resources
• Catalan-Aragonese altarpieces