As Ursula Hoff notes in European Paintings before 1800 in the National Gallery of Victoria (1995, p. 165), this beautiful painting relates to two different versions of the St George myth. According to the mid-thirteenth century account in Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend, the people of Silene in Libya had been sacrificing their children to a dragon, in the vain hope of appeasing it. When it came time for the daughter of the king to be sacrificed, St George rode out against the dragon and subdued it, allowing the princess to lead the creature captive into the city. While acknowledging this narrative, the Melbourne panel more closely follows the slightly later version of the story, told by Petrus de Natalibus in his Heiligenleben of c.1370, in which St George slays the dragon by beheading it with his sword. In the painting, the archetypal confrontation between good and evil is conveyed through the contrast presented by the spiky, bat-like black dragon and the saint with his sleekly rounded protective armour, and by the counterposing of the black monster and the saint’s white horse. The battle between St George and the dragon is presided over by the figure of God the Father.Text by Dr Ted Gott from Painting and sculpture before 1800 in the international collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 23.