St. George or St. George and the Dragon is a small painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It is housed in the Louvre in Paris. A later version of the same subject is the St. George in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This painting and the equally small Saint Michael, also in the Louvre, are a pair. In the Mazarin Collection they were joined together, forming a diptych, and bound in leather. Louis XIV acquired them from Mazarin's heirs in 1661. Saint George has sometimes been ascribed to the artist's Roman period, because of the fact that the horse resembles one of... the horses of Monte Cavallo . However, Raphael could easily have known this particular horse from a drawing of it, done by one of Leonardo's pupils. To judge by the still somewhat naïve and Peruginesque style of the painting, it is really one of Raphael's early works, dating from about 1504. He did another painting of the same subject a little later , and towards the end of his life he painted a large Sant Michael which is also in the Louvre.
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