XI. THE PLACE OF DRAGONS 395

belly, falls to be mentioned afterwards. The ghastly heap of them, crowned by a human mummy, withered and brown,* beside the coil of the dragon’s tail. seem meant merely to add general emphasis to the whole. The mummy (and not this alone in the picture) may be compared with Spenser’s description of the Captain of the Army of Lusts:-

“His body lean and meagre as a rake,

And skin all withered like a dryed rook,

Thereto as cold and dreary as a snake.

. . . . . .

Upon his head he wore a helmet light,

Made of a dead man’s skull, that seemed a ghastly sight.”¹

235. The row of five palm trees behind the dragon’s head perhaps refers to the kinds of temptation over which Victory must be gained, and may thus be illustrated by the five troops that in Spenser assail the several senses, or beside Chaucer’s five fingers of the hand of lust.² It may be observed that Pliny speaks of the Essenes-preceders of the Christian Hermits-who had given up the world and its joys as “gens socia palmarum.”†

236. Behind the dragon, in the far background, is a great city. Its walls and towers are crowded by anxious spectators of the battle. There stands in it, on a lofty pedestal, the equestrian statue of an emperor on horseback, perhaps placed there by Carpaccio for sign of Alexandria, perhaps merely from a Venetian’s pride and joy in the great figure of Colleone recently set up in his city.³ In the background of the opposite (St. George’s) side of the picture rises a precipitous hill, crowned by a church. The cliffs are waveworn, an arm of the sea passing between them and the city.

* The venom of the stellio, a spotted species of lizard, emblem of shamelessness, was held to cause blackening of the face.

† Pliny, Hist. Nat., v. 17.

¹ [Faerie Queene, ii. xi. 21, 22; quoted by Ruskin in Vol. X. p. 383.]

² [The Persones Tale, § 76 in Skeat’s edition.]

³ [For notices of this statue by Verrocchio, set up in 1496, see Vol. X. p. 8, and Vol. XI. p. 19 and n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]