Masterpiece

The Virgin and Child With Saints, circa 1435-41, by PisanelloNature is caught and then flamboyantly reinvented in this joyous dream of a painting. The details of St George’s complicated late medieval armour – precisely modelled on the kind of flanged metal sheeting knights wore in 15th-century Europe – show Pisanello’s brilliant ability to mimic real volume with shading. He has looked at the world around him closely. But as George and his fellow Saint, Anthony Abbot, stand guard, the Virgin Mary appears in the sky in a gold nimbus right out of Byzantine art and sends heavenly light shimmering in waves of gold and blue through the atmosphere. This abstract wave effect magically disrupts the painting’s creation of a real world. Pisanello can see clearly, but his imagination reaches far beyond the visible. • National Gallery, London.