22 5/8" x 15 1/4"
This is one of the rare examples of Dali signing his name Salvador Dali and dating the print 1947.
Most of Dali's graphics are simply signed "Dali"
Printed on wove paper.
The canceled printing plate is located at the Cleveland Museum.
One of these works is owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
can also be seen at the Museum in Spain when rotated back for public viewing.
Look closely at the background and you will see the princess.
History:
The dragon tales and St. George and the Dragon date back prior to the middle ages.
William Shakespeare refers to St. George and the Dragon in Richard III; act v, also in King Lear; act I. Dali was not only a fan of Shakespeare but as the St. George and the dragon stories apply to tales brought back by the crusaders in the genre of romance, it makes sense that Dali studied the history of the subject.
According to the Golden Legend the narrative episode of Saint George and the Dragon took place in a place he called "Silene," in Libya; the Golden Legend is the first to place this legend in Libya as a sufficiently exotic locale, where a dragon might be imagined. In the tenth-century Georgian narrative, the place is the fictional city of Lasia, and it is the godless Emperor who is Selinus.
The town had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it two sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery. It happened that the lot fell on the king's daughter, who is in some versions of the story called Sabra. The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.
Saint George by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain. The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross, charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon's neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash.
She and Saint George led the dragon back to the city of Silene, where it terrified the people at its approach. But Saint George called out to them, saying that if they consented to become Christians and be baptised, he would slay the dragon before them. The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George slew the dragon, and the body was carted out of the city on four ox-carts. "Fifteen thousand men baptized, without women and children." On the site where the dragon died, the king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George, and from its altar a spring arose whose waters cured all disease.
