Verona is one of Italy's most fascinating cities for the traveler from an art historical point of view. To begin, it retains a huge vestige of its ancient Roman past: a wholly intact amphitheater whose size ranks third in the world, after Rome and Capua . But laid over its Roman ruins is a city of distinctly North Italian courtly style. The Scaligeri and Visconti dynasties, who ruled Verona from 1283 to 1405, were drawn to French and Burgundian court ways, and so the architecture and sculpture in the city looks Gothic, and the paintings are touched with gold and the lives of knights and princesses. There is an odd conflation, then, of ancient Roman bombast and delicate fairy-tale art, with fewer traces of the classical revival that overtook Florence, Rome and eventually Venice during the Renaissance period. Verona is also a traveler's jewel because it is largely off-limits to car traffic. It is a city for walking, for music (opera performances take place in the amphitheater in July and August), for afternoon drinks in Piazza Brà, and for marveling at the unexpected beauties of its visual arts.

In the sacristy of the church of Sant'Anastasia gleams one of my favorite works of art: St. George and the Princess, executed in 1436-38 by Pisanello. Pisanello (whose name unflatteringly refers to his short stature) came to Verona from his native Pisa as a young artist-in-training, and his career eventually took him to Venice, Rome, Ferrara and Mantua. But none of his frescoes survive intact except in Verona, and even this masterpiece in the church of Sant'Anastasia is damaged. Bits of paint have flaked off. You might compare its surface to the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua, because while Giotto laid down his pigments quickly on wet plaster to ensure a lasting physical bond between paint and wall, Pisanello worked on dry plaster so that he could proceed with less haste and accomplish greater detail. But the result is a fragile surface, now well worn through the centuries.

The subject of the fresco, St. George and his rescued princess, is the same as that painted by Vittor Carpaccio in the Scuola di San Giorgio in Venice. The better-preserved half of the fresco shows the fair St. George by his horse, and the princess on the other side of the animal. Pisanello has made the seemingly odd choice to picture the horse with his behind facing us -- not the most attractive view! But this technical feat allows him to demonstrate his virtuosity as an artist. He underscores this by painting the other horse in the picture facing forwards. The two hanged men with broken necks swaying in the left background were studied from life: criminal executions commonly took place outside the walls of Italian towns of the period.