Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni: Carpaccio's Dragon

Why is it significant?

Find the small stone front beside the canal, with Saint George on horseback carved over the door, and step into what feels like a jewellery box: a low, dark room panelled in wood, a gilded ceiling, and a band of paintings running around the walls at eye level. Give your eyes a minute to adjust.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Find the small stone front beside the canal, with Saint George on horseback carved over the door, and step into what feels like a jewellery box: a low, dark room panelled in wood, a gilded ceiling, and a band of paintings running around the walls at eye level. Give your eyes a minute to adjust.

This is the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, the brotherhood of the Schiavoni, the Slavs of Dalmatia, sailors and merchants from the opposite shore of the Adriatic who lived in Venice in large numbers. Their confraternity was founded in 1451 to look after its members, bury its dead and help the poor. Between about 1502 and 1507 they asked Vittore Carpaccio to paint the stories of their patron saints.

Start with Saint George. His lance goes straight through the dragon's jaw in one long diagonal, while the ground around them is littered with what the dragon has been eating: skulls, bones, half a body, a lizard, a toad. It is a horror film painted like a fairy tale. Nearby, a very young Saint Tryphon tames a basilisk that looks rather like a confused puppy.

Then Saint Jerome leads his tame lion into the monastery, and the monks scatter in every direction, robes flying, like pigeons from a running child. And now the painting everyone falls in love with: Saint Augustine at his desk, pen raised, turning toward a sudden light pouring through the window. According to the legend, at that moment he hears the voice of Jerome, who has just died far away. On the floor, a little white dog sits up and stares at the light too.

The most astonishing thing is that the paintings still hang in the building they were painted for, owned by the same brotherhood, which still exists more than five centuries later. Very few cycles of this age in Italy have never left home. When you are ready, follow the canal north and then turn east, toward a huge white church that was built on a vineyard.