Tintoretto Saint George and the Dragon Paintings The National Gallery London
2 Video Views·Mar 19, 2026
Look at the impact of the expressive drapery in Tintoretto's painting of Saint George and the Dragon with art and costume historian Ann Hollander.
Read about the painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more on the National Gallery website:
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jacopo-tintoretto-saint-george-and-the-dragon
The princess is not even watching,
and she is wearing her princess costume,
such as she might wear in a pageant,
with a little scarf, such as a Venetian princess might wear,
all around her neck.
And behind her, however,
she's wearing what seems to be her cloak.
But this object is not a cloak.
It is a piece of expressive drapery,
rather like an expressive phrase of music,
wrapped around her in various ways
to raise the emotional temperature of the picture.
It whips out to sea,
instead of being whipped by the sea breeze.
It wraps her around her hips.
It slides over one of her arms,
and it whips out behind her
in a way that no real cloak could do.
And it's there simply to raise the temperature,
to indicate the kind of turbulence of her feeling
and her combination of hope and fear about the dragon.