St. George and the Princess

Saint George, the knight who in legend slew a dragon to rescue a princess and her city, takes leave of the princess before the fight. The story comes not from the Bible but from the Golden Legend, the hugely popular medieval collection of saints' lives. Pisanello frescoes it as a chivalric fairy tale: a fantastical white city bristles with Gothic spires, elegant horses crowd the foreground - one shown daringly from the rear - and two hanged men dangle from a gallows at the upper left, a grim note amid the pageantry. It is a masterpiece of late International Gothic in Italy, a world of courtly glamour just before the Renaissance swept it away.