Saint George

Around 1460 Mantegna was leaving Padua for the court of Mantua, and this small panel catches him at that hinge in his life. Look at the two painted marble strips running down the sides, meant to read as a stone window frame. Then notice how George breaks the illusion. His elbow juts out over the left edge and the dead dragon's head pushes past the right one, as if the saint is standing just inside our own space. That trick of a figure spilling out of a fictive frame was something Mantegna loved to do, and few painters of his day could pull it off so cleanly. George holds the snapped-off shaft of his lance, the broken point still lodged in the dragon's jaw, and above him hangs a garland of fruit, a habit he picked up in the Padua workshop where he trained as a boy. Behind his shoulder a road winds up to a walled hilltop town.