PISANELLO
(b. 1395, Pisa, d. 1455, Roma)

St George and the Princess of Trebizond (right side)

1436-38
Fresco, 223 x 620 cm (entire fresco)
Pellegrini Chapel, Sant'Anastasia, Verona

Pisanello was educated in Verona his first master was Stefano da Verona. He worked in Venice with Gentile da Fabriano on the frescoes of the Palazzo Ducale, then in the court of the Gonzaga princes in Mantua. He went to Rome with Gentile and worked on the frescoes of San Giovanni Laterano (destroyed). Returning to Verona he executed the frescoes of the Pellegrini Chapel in the church Santa Anastasia. Only the detail showing Saint George survived from these frescoes.

Pisanello painted in his native Verona a depiction of a favourite subject of the period, St George, the Princess and the Dragon. It is a large fresco painted in the crown and spandrels of an arch.

In the right spandrel the heroic St George prepares to intervene on behalf of the Princess. Pisanello placed the scene in Verona, showing the princess and the saint in the most elegant clothes of the day. In the background, men, presumably traitors, hang from the gallows. Like Uccello, Pisanello was also engaged by the new devotion to perspectival foreshortening, as is demonstrated by the horses, one seen from behind, and the other seen straight on.