Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon
The Serpent and the Dragon as the central motif, with the Angel and the Wing in a secondary part. From The Apocalypse.
What is happening
Apocalypse 12:8 “And they prevailed not: neither was their place found any more in heaven.”
Key · 2 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 1
The picture
The archangel spears the seven-headed dragon while three angels fight beside him; by eye. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
The verse is short and the picture is enormous: and there was a great battle in heaven; Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels. Dürer fills the upper two-thirds of the block with the fight and leaves the bottom third for a calm river landscape with a town, hills and boats, because the battle is in heaven and the earth below does not yet know.
Michael is at the centre in a long robe, his wings spread and his hair flying, both hands on the shaft of a spear that he drives straight down into the dragon's throat. Round him three more angels fight: one at the left with a sword raised over a dragon's head, one at the upper right drawing a bow, one behind with a spear. Their wings and the dragon's wings cross and tangle so that the whole upper sky is a knot of feathers, scales and weapons. The chapter's angels have no names; Dürer gives them no faces to speak of either, only the work.
The dragon is not one body. Under Michael's spear is a great beast with a lion's jaws; at the left another head snarls up at the sword; at the right a long neck and a bat's wing curl round the archer; below the archangel's feet a serpentine body loops through the clouds. The chapter's dragon is the same one that appeared to the woman clothed with the sun, red, with seven heads, and Dürer spreads the seven heads across the composition so that Michael seems to be fighting a whole sky of them. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world. The next verse says that neither was their place found any more in heaven, and the empty landscape below is where they are about to land.
What the print shows that the text does not is the effort. The chapter reports a result. Dürer draws the moment before it, the spear halfway down, the archer's string drawn, no dragon dead yet, and the town by the river with its Sunday quiet. The reading of the landscape as the world not yet touched by the war is the archive's, and it says so; the rest is in the twelfth chapter, verse by verse.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
A single creature doing two opposite jobs. Note whether it is bound, killed, or eating itself.
In plain words The dragon fights on both sides of the archangel: a great many-headed body under his spear at the centre, and more heads and coils at the left and right. The chapter calls him the great dragon, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, and says he was cast out.
Apocalypse 12:7 “And there was a great battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels.”
Apocalypse 12:9 “And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world.”
The mark of an errand rather than a nature. Note whether the wings are open, folded, or given to the figure by someone else.
In plain words Michael drives his spear down with both hands, his wings and robe flying, and three angels fight beside him with sword, spear and bow. The chapter gives them all one line: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon.
Apocalypse 12:7 “Michael and his angels fought with the dragon”
Also carrying the Serpent and the Dragon
30 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
The Virgin with a Dragon at Her Feet
A Crowned Woman with a Rose-Topped Caduceus, in a Circle of Water
Rivers in the Wilderness, with Serpents and Fire
Hermes Standing upon the Back of Typhon
Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans
DRACO non moritur, nisi cum fratre & sorore sua interficiatur, qui sunt Sol & Luna
Where the detail is the subject
This is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about it.
By the same hand
In the same series
Record
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