Saint George

A title with no dragon in it

George is one of the few saints whose attribute is recognisable enough to be assumed. Most entries name it — the dragon appears in 12 titles here, usually right after the saint. This one does not. It gives a name and stops, which leaves the identification entirely to whatever the picture is holding: a lance, armour, a serpent, or none of them.

What the record holds

The entry is dated 1513 and gives the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, US as its location. No dimensions are recorded. It is filed under male portraiture — and under nothing else. There is no religious category on this entry at all. The style is given as High Renaissance and the nationality as Italian; the measured colour families are brown and yellow.

A saint filed as a portrait

That filing is the interesting part. Indexed only as male portraiture, the work sits in this catalogue as a picture of a man, and the sainthood survives in the title alone. It is a fair description of a whole class of images: a standing figure in armour, given a name by the record and an identity by whatever object the painter chose to put in his hand. Where the categories are silent, the attribute is the only remaining witness, and the entry does not report it.