Illuminated manuscript featuring Saint Marina and the dragon According to Bruce, one of the reasons he collaborated with Penguin on the series is that he wanted to make “these fascinating themes … accessible to general readers,” demonstrating that monsters of the past are not the same as modern ones. Collections of texts from the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds, these books allow readers to see for themselves how people from the past thought about things that went bump in the night. In 2016, he published The Penguin Book of the Undead, and in 2018, The Penguin Book of Hell. Over the past few years, Bruce, a historian at Fordham University, has developed wide-ranging expertise in how medieval people talked about monsters. Two thousand years of legend and lore about the menace and majesty of dragons, which have breathed fire into our imaginations from ancient Rome to "Game of Thrones" Buy The Penguin Book of Dragons (Penguin Classics) As historian Scott Bruce, editor of the newly released Penguin Book of Dragons, explains, dragons in the medieval mindset stood “as the enemies of humankind, against which we measure the prowess of our heroes.” As such, they were neatly and easily folded into Christian tradition, “often cast … as agents of the devil or demons in disguise.” But dragons held a special place in both the modern imagination and the medieval one. Medieval people told tales about all kinds of monsters, including ghosts, werewolves and women who turned into serpents on Saturdays. In the European Middle Ages, monster stories served as religious teaching tools, offering examples of what not to do, manifestations of the threats posed by the supernatural and the diabolical, and metaphors for the evil humans do to one another. Though horror today is most often about entertainment-the thrill of the jump scare or the suspense of the thriller-it hasn’t always been that way. Dragons and other monsters, nights dark and full of terror, lurked largely in the domain of stories-tales, filtered through the intervening centuries and our own interests, that remain with us today.Īs Halloween approaches, we’re naturally thinking about scary stories. These are images long associated with the European Middle Ages, yet most (all) medieval people went their whole lives without meeting even a single winged, fire-breathing behemoth. The gallant knight charging to rescue the maiden from the scaly beast. In Landscape with St George and the Dragon though, he simply seemed to want a painting of a place for which he had grown fond.The dragon resting on its golden hoard. Peter Paul Rubens was a diplomat whose exceptional artistic talent was recognised and trusted at the royal courts of Europe. Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rembrandt have all been influenced by Rubens work, as have the landscapes of Constable and Gainsborough. Yet his own legacy was to influence many of his peers and artists across the years. He was inspired by Italian masters such as Caraveggio, Titian and Veronese. Rubens was one of the most influential painters of baroque art, using colour and grandeur to present images in all their dramatic glory. Around 1605 Rubens painted St George and the Dragon in a more symbolic portrayal, including a girl holding a lamb representing the purity of the church. It was not the first occasion Rubens had incorporated St George in a painting. While in London Rubens stayed at York House in London and this painting could well be his view of the river Thames from this residence. For all its grandeur of symbolic imagery the painting is more a homage to the country than the King. George is too alike King Charles I to probably be coincidence, the woman he is with is not a likeness of the King’s wife, Queen Henrietta Mary. George is held by a mounted horseman and widows mourn husbands killed by the dragon, all while two angels swoop gracefully overhead.Īlthough the image of St. The final painting is an elaborate scene fitting of the baroque style Rubens was known for. Indeed, the joins in the canvas can be spotted by the naked eye. When first painted, St George and the woman he addresses would have dominated the canvas, but Rubens added to the edges of the painting in the years before it returned to England. The painting has St George front and central, standing over the defeated dragon. In 1635 the painting in its now completed and enlarged form was acquired by King Charles I and formed part of the collection at Windsor Castle. Rubens produced the centrepiece of the painting while in England, taking it home with him when he left, almost as a souvenir of his visit.
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