. Sacred and legendary art . n. A voicefrom heaven assured her that her prayer was granted; so shewent and received joyfully the crown of martyrdom, beingbeheaded by the sword. In devotional pictures, the attribute of St. Margaret is thedragon. She is usually trampling him under her feet, holdingup the cross in her hand. Sometimes the dragon is boundwith a cord ; or his jaws are distended as if to swallow her ;or he is seen rent and burst, and St. Margaret stands upon himunharmed,— as in the old metrical legend in the AuchinleckMSS. : — Maiden Margrete tho [then] Loked her beside, And sees a l
. Sacred and legendary art . n. A voicefrom heaven assured her that her prayer was granted; so shewent and received joyfully the crown of martyrdom, beingbeheaded by the sword. In devotional pictures, the attribute of St. Margaret is thedragon. She is usually trampling him under her feet, holdingup the cross in her hand. Sometimes the dragon is boundwith a cord ; or his jaws are distended as if to swallow her ;or he is seen rent and burst, and St. Margaret stands upon himunharmed,— as in the old metrical legend in the AuchinleckMSS. : — Maiden Margrete tho [then] Loked her beside, And sees a loathly dragon Out of an hirn [corner] glide: His eyen were ful griesly, His mouth opened wide, And Margrete might no where flee, There she must abide. Maiden Margrete Stood still as any stone, And that loathly worm, To her-ward gan gone, Took her in his foul mouth. And swallowed her flesh and bone. Anon he brast — Damage hath she none! Maiden Margrete Upon the dragon stood; Blyth was her harte, And joyful was her ST. MARGARET (Raphael) ST. MARGARET 509 This is literally the picture which^ in several instances, theartists have placed before us. As martyr she bears, of right, the palm and the crown; andthese, in general, serve to distinguish St. Margaret from , who has also the attributes of the dragon and thecross. Here, however, setting the usual attributes aside, thecharacter ought to be so distinctly marked, that there shouldbe no possibility of confounding the beautiful and deified hero-ine of a spiritual warfare with the majestic maturity and staidsimplicity of Martha. In some pictures St. Margaret has a garland of pearls roundher head, in allusion to her name; and I have seen one picture(in the Siena Academy), and only one, in which she wears agarland of daisies, and carries daisies in her lap and in herhand. I shall now give some examples of St. Margaret treateddevotionally. 1. The famous St. Margaret of Raphael (in the Louvre)was painted for Francis
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