St. George and the Dragon (FS.II.327, Details of Renaissance Paintings), 1984

"St. George and the Dragon (FS.II.327)" is a screenprint created by Andy Warhol in 1984 for his series 'Details of Renaissance Paintings'. From the edition of 107, the artwork is signed 'Andy Warhol' and annotated lower left. The artwork is framed in a contemporary white frame and has a framed size of 36 x 46.75". The artwork ships framed and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Andy Warhol’s "St. George and the Dragon (FS.II.324–327)," from the 1984 "Details of Renaissance Paintings" series, transforms Paolo Uccello’s Renaissance image into a bold meditation on myth, repetition, and visual power. Rather than reproducing the full narrative, Warhol isolates a fragment: the princess at left, facing the dragon, while St. George himself is effectively cropped out. This choice shifts the emphasis away from heroic action and toward a more ambiguous encounter between vulnerability, danger, beauty, and spectacle.

The source story is familiar: St. George rescues a princess by defeating a dragon, a medieval image of courage, faith, and good overcoming evil. Warhol’s version complicates that clarity. By removing the heroic center of the scene, he leaves the viewer with the princess and the beast, transforming the image into something stranger and more psychologically charged. The dragon, with its spiked wings, horned head, and curling tail, becomes the dominant visual force. It is less an adversary to be slain than a graphic apparition, almost comic-book-like in its sharp contours and theatrical menace.

Jane Daggett Dillenberger perceptively compared Warhol’s treatment to a comic strip, suggesting that the feats once associated with saints and legends may now be found in the modern mythology of superheroes. That observation is especially apt here. Warhol does not mock the Renaissance source; he translates it into a contemporary language of flat color, high contrast, cropping, and serial variation. The sacred and legendary become newly immediate, closer to mass media, fantasy, and Pop spectacle.

Across the four prints, color becomes the major vehicle of interpretation. The black-ground version, with its acid green dragon, feels the most ominous and nocturnal; the princess appears stark and isolated against the threatening form. The hot pink and orange version is the most electric, turning the scene into a vivid Pop confrontation. The darker red and green impression feels denser and more atmospheric, almost infernal, with the dragon emerging from a turbulent field of color. The deep blue version, with red wings, turquoise lines, and yellow accents, is the cleanest and most graphic, giving the image a contemporary, design-forward clarity.

Together, the four works demonstrate Warhol’s ability to alter mood without changing the underlying composition. The same myth becomes dark, playful, fiery, or sleek depending on color alone. This serial approach connects the prints to Warhol’s broader interest in how images survive through repetition and variation.

"St. George and the Dragon" is not a straightforward devotional or heroic image. It is Warhol’s Renaissance remix: a fragment of an old legend made strange again, where the absence of the hero allows the image itself — princess, dragon, color, and myth — to take center stage.