Antonio Pisanello's elegantly decorative “Saint George and…

Antonio Pisanello's elegantly decorative “Saint George and the Princess,” created around 1437-38 for Sant’ Anastasia in Verona, clearly recalls, in its emphasis on visual splendor and detailed observation, the International Gothic style of his mentor, Gentile da Fabriano.

With preoccupations paralleling those of contemporary Florentine artists, Pisanello explores in his drawings the effects of three-dimensional space and foreshortening. (Of the group of frescoes that he executes, only three major pictorial schemes survive, together with a large number of drawings and an important body of portrait medals.)

Born Antonio Pisano in about 1395, he has worked extensively as a painter and medalist for the courts of powerful ruling families such as the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Visconti of Milan, and the Este of Ferrara; in 1431-32, he also filled commissions in Rome for Pope Eugene IV.