This extraordinary icon was discovered in 1959 in the tiny village of Pskov, which lies on the River Pinega, a tributary of the Severnaya Dvina which flows into the White Sea at Archangel, in north-western Russia. The panel was being used as the shutter of a barn window. Subsequent cleaning by conservators revealed that it had been overpainted several times. Below an eighteenth-century folk painting they uncovered a seventeenth-century layer and finally this outstanding fourteenth-century icon, which was immediately recognized as an early masterpiece of Russian painting…
The saint is painted in vigorous motion, reining in his leaping horse. The representation of St George on a black, rather than white horse is extremely rare, which accounts for the icon’s popular name, ‘the Black George’.
I can only assume that they meant this was found in a village in the Pskov region, because describing Pskov as a “tiny village” is…not accurate.
Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is St George slaying the dragon, from the same Italian book of hours we looked at yesterday. I still can’t believe how much gold leaf was used in this book. The patrons must have had a phenomenal amount of money to spend on something this lavish.
I think this image is hilarious. St George’s faithful charger looks far more like a wooden horse from a carousel than a battle hardened stallion. St George himself looks like a child, and don’t get me started on the dragon!
I love it, but to my twenty-first century eyes, it looks completely ridiculous!
Image source: Walters Museum MS W322. Creative Commons licensed via Wikimedia Commons.
