Details about the early life of the Florentine sculptor Francesco Fanelli are limited, though he is known to have been working in Genoa in 1609-1610. The exact date of the artist's arrival in England has yet to be firmly established, however Fanelli did enter the employ of Charles I for whom he is known to have designed a fountain at Hampton Court. Fanelli left England for Paris in 1642, and he died in 1665. At present, his only signed work is a bronze portrait bust of Charles II as Prince of Wales at Welbeck, dated 1640 and made for the Earl of Newcastle. Besides his sensitive portraiture, many examples of which remain at present unpublished, Fanelli appears to have specialized in small scale and darkly patinated bronzes, primarily of equestrian subjects.
It is known from two inventories, one at Whitehall and the other at Welbeck, that Francesco Fanelli did at least two versions of St George and the dragon. In the former, item 28 is listed as "...a little S George on horseback wth a- dragon by, being of brass upon a black- ebbone woodden Peddistall...". In the Welbeck inventory there are two entries: "St George horseback the dragon dead" and "another St George combatant with the dragon". In fact, three related versions exist today in both public and private collections. The present bronze is a rare example of the St George group owned by the Holborne and Menstrie Museum in Bath (op. cit., fig. 193). Closely related to Fanelli's Cupid on horseback (see lot 155), this bronze represents a spirited 17th century rendering of England's patron saint.