Saint George and the Dragon

The romantic story of the chivalrous knight who became England’s patron saint appealed strongly to Morris’s artistic circle. Burne-Jones featured him in a series of painted panels for the dining room in Miles Birket Foster’s Surrey home. He made this watercolour shortly afterwards.

Legend had it that the dragon was terrorising the inhabitants of Silene (possibly Cyrene in modern Libya), who appeased it with animal and human sacrifices. George, a Roman soldier, appears just as the young princess Sabra is about to be sacrificed. Protected by the sign of the cross, George slays the dragon.

Burne-Jones’s treatment of the tale is lyrical rather than dramatic; the struggle isn’t violent, and the princess is relegated to the background. He based the dragon (whose armadillo-like skin echoes the knight’s armour) on a late-medieval German print.