This attractively painted popular icon combines several different legends associated with Saint George: the slaying of the Dragon and the rescue of the kidnapped boy rescued from his captor, a Turkish pasha who made him wait at table. We see him in Turkish clothes with a Turkish looking coffee pot apparently still in the act of serving.

The liveliness of the prancing horse and the saints magnificent Roman armour recall 15th century Renaissance that influenced Cretan icon painting. Here, the tradition has passed through the centuries, still alive in a Greek monastic environment at the end of the 18th century. An unusual feature, also inherited from an older age, the 12th century, is the raised plaster of the saint’s nimbus. Mount Athos is one likely place where our artist would have been exposed to such influences