LEMBERGER, Georg
(b. 1490/95, Landshut, d. 1540, Magdeburg)

St George Freeing the Princess

1520
Oil on wood, 19 x 18 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

This small composition represents a theme popular in North European painting and gives us an interpretation of the legend which is particularly charged with fantastic effects. The strangely elongated trees appear to sprout up one on top of the other, waving their ghostly fronds as if in a dream-like vision. The three small archaic figures are somehow lost in the painting, which seems to aim more at conveying the unknown, mysterious forces of nature. The fully armoured knight with his plumed helmet and the fragile kneeling princess thus become merely the pretext for the representation of a far loftier and subtle magic.




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