San Giorgio e il drago

Paolo Uccello painted this near the end of his life, around 1470, when he was one of the few artists in Florence genuinely obsessed with the new science of perspective, the trick of making a flat panel hold real depth. You can see him working at it here in the little squared patches of grass that shrink toward the horizon, though the ground still tilts up awkwardly to the right. He has folded two moments of the legend into one scene. George drives his lance into a dragon whose cave echoes its own triangular shape, while behind him the princess stands calm and slightly bored, a slender leash already looped around the beast's neck. The spiralling storm cloud over George's shoulder seems to be doing some of the fighting for him.