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Saint George and the Dragon [f.p.340,r]
The Triumph of St. George The Baptism of the Sultan St. Tryphonius and the Basilisk From the picture by Carpaccio [f.p.341,v]
340 ST. MARK’S REST
than Carpaccio, as he heaps and heaps his Sultan’s snowy crest, and crowns his pretty lady with her ruby tower. No desert hermit is more temperate; no ambassador on perilous policy more subtle; no preacher of first Christian gospel to a primitive race more earnest or tender. The wonderfullest of Venetian Harlequins this,-variegated, like Geryon, to the innermost mind of him-to the lightest gleam of his pencil: “Con piů color sommesse e sopraposte Non fer mai in drappo Tartari nč Turchi”;1 and all for good.
Of course you will not believe me at first,-nor indeed, till you have unwoven many a fibre of his silk and gold. I had no idea of the make of it myself, till this last year, when I happily had beguiled to Venice one of my best young Oxford men, eager as myself to understand this historic tapestry, and finer fingered than I, who once getting hold of the fringes of it, has followed them thread by thread through all the gleaming damask, and read it clear; whose account of the real meaning of all these pictures you shall have presently in full.
168. But first, we will go round the room to know what is here to read, and take inventory of our treasures; and I will tell you only the little I made out myself, which is all that, without more hard work than can be got through to-day, you are likely either to see in them or believe of them.
First, on the left, then, St. George and the Dragon-combatant both, to the best of their powers; perfect each in their natures of dragon and knight. No dragon that I know of, pictured among mortal worms; no knight I know of, pictured in immortal chivalry, so perfect, each in his kind, as these two. What else is visible on the battle-ground, of living creature,-frog, newt, or viper,-no less admirable in their kind. The small black viper, central, I have painted carefully for the schools of Oxford as a Natural
1 [Dante’s description of Geryon (Inferno, xvii. 16, 17): “Colours variegated more Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state With interchangeable embroidery wove” (Cary); quoted also in Vol. VII. p. 400.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
