Biography

Italian illuminator and painter. His cognomen is derived from an illuminated Missal, known as the St George Codex (Rome, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica). Until the early 1950s, he was thought to have been trained by a Sienese master, specifically, a follower of Simone Martini. The arguments centred around his association with Simone in Avignon and the importance of both artists for the development of the International Gothic style. Simone Martini's lost fresco of St George in Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon, was considered to be the model for the St George Master's illustration on folio 85r of the Vatican manuscript: on that page, St George frees the Cappadocian princess in the margins of Cardinal Giacomo Stefaneschi's text on 'The Miracles and Martyrdom of St George'. Most scholars, however, now consider that the Master received his early training in Florentine art and that he was active in the first half of the 14th century, possibly as early as the first decade.