Saint George

Cosimo Tura's Saint George from 1474 was a panel from the organ shutters of Ferrara Cathedral, one of the most important secular-ecclesiastical commissions of the Ferrarese Quattrocento. The organ shutters — painted on both sides with standing saints and prophets — were visible to the cathedral congregation either open or closed, making them simultaneously liturgical furniture and a significant programme of public art. Tura depicted George in full armour, the dragon slain at his feet, as the embodiment of Christian military virtue — appropriate for a civic commission in a city-state where Este military power was essential to political survival. The figure's elaborate armour provided Tura with a vehicle for his extraordinary metallic surface painting, and the dragon became an opportunity for fantastical zoological invention.

The armour is the compositional and technical centrepiece: Tura renders each plate as a separately described curved surface with its own reflective highlight, building up the full suit through dozens of individually articulated metal forms. The dragon below is treated with less illusionistic rigour — more heraldic than naturalistic — which gives the composition a deliberate two-register quality: the realistic knight above, the emblematic beast below.