Saint George and the Dragon

In 1816 Géricault entered the Prix de Rome, the French state competition whose winners were sent to study in Italy at the government's expense, and he did not win. He went anyway, paying his own way, and was in Rome by that November, staying about a year. This sheet is dated to those months, 1816 to 1817. It shows Saint George on horseback over the dragon, the warrior saint of countless altarpieces, drawn in graphite pencil on a page about 26 by 21 centimetres. It is number 1078 in the catalogue of Géricault's work compiled by the French curator Germain Bazin. The Museum of Fine Arts acquired it in 2001.