My whole life is about photography I'm working on t becoming a better photographer.I've always been an abstract thinker sort of a spiral in a linear world. Photography has become a way for me to translate what's in my head.
Wolfgang Wilhelm (1578 –1653) was a German Prince. He was Count Palatine of Neuburg and Duke of Jülich and Berg. Wolfgang Wilhelm was the winner of the War of the Jülich Succession (1609–1614), and became thus the first ruler of Palatinate-Neuburg.
In 1613 Wolfgang Wilhelm married Magdalene of Bavaria
at Munich; with this union, the Bavarian rulers hoped that the Lutheran prince would return to the Catholic faith. On 15 May 1614, a few months before his father’s death, Wolfgang Wilhelm officially took the Catholic faith in the Düsseldorf Church of St. Lambertus. Because he converted to Catholicism and practised a strict policy of neutrality in the Thirty Years’ War, his territories escaped widespread destruction. In 1615, he was made a Knight in the Order of the Golden Fleece. (Source)
In this painting the German nobleman was portrayed again in Spanish costume and with the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, as in his previous portrait by Van Dyck. Following the Spanish official courtly attire meant to represent himself as an ally of the Spanish Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs. In 1624 Wolfgang Wilhelm had visited Spain, where King Philip IV conferred him the title of Grandee of Spain. Wolfgang Wilhelm was, additionally, a descendant of the Spanish Queen Joanna of Castile.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a painter famous for his paintings of “contemporary genre, classical, and biblical themes, invariably involving animals,” as the Dashesh Museum puts it, would pay a little more attention to the roles the animals play in such a scene.
But what makes this so stunning is its honesty. Suddenly, Saint George’s feat isn’t an easy triumph: it’s gratitude for even surviving in his heaven-turned eyes; it’s a battle so hard-won that his horse lies dead or dying beneath the dragon; it’s exhaustion so severe that he himself lies—almost companionably—in the curve of his slain enemy’s body, his helmet cast to the side.
