Saint Margaret

A young woman in blue steps calmly onto the wing of a dragon, a martyr's palm in her hand. Pope Leo X ordered this Saint Margaret from Raphael as a gift for a princess who shared her name.

The story behind the painting

In 1518 Pope Leo X commissioned the painting from Raphael. It was intended for Marguerite d'Angoulême, Duchess of Alençon and sister of the French king Francis I, so the saint was chosen to match the name of the recipient. Raphael made the preparatory drawing, but the execution was largely entrusted to his pupil Giulio Pippi, known as Giulio Romano. Giorgio Vasari mentions a Saint Margaret at the château of Fontainebleau that Giulio executed almost entirely after his master's drawing. The oil on canvas, 178 by 122 cm, is now in the Louvre.

What to look for

Saint Margaret of Antioch is shown full length, in a close-fitting blue dress, with a red cloth over her right arm; that hand holds a palm. She stands on the dragon's open wing, which spreads across the ground between its open jaws on the left and its coiled tail on the right. Her gaze is directed forward, slightly to the viewer's right. The scene takes place in a kind of brown crevice at the edge of a forest. Only a little sky shows, at the top right through branches and a little to the left.

Meaning and intent

The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine tells that Saint Margaret of Antioch defeated the devil by trampling on him. Other accounts say she was swallowed by a monster, a symbol of Satan, and miraculously pierced its belly to escape. That is why she is often shown raised up on the dragon. In Christian imagery, the palm she holds is the attribute of martyrdom. Here the battle is already over: the saint does not fight, she simply stands, and the calm of her pose is the sign of her victory.

Legacy

Another version by Raphael and his workshop, with some differences in composition, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. There the saint holds a crucifix in her left hand and turns sideways, her feet among the dragon's coiled tail, her gaze directed at the monster's jaws. The Louvre picture was also interpreted in the 19th century by the engraver Jacques Étienne Pannier, who lived from 1802 to 1869. Wikidata dates the painting 1518, the year of the commission given in the source.