Santa Marina - 17th C.

Oil on canvas
105 x 77 cm

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium

Among the paintings that can be attributed with certainty to Zurbarán, we find at least two that depict the martyr Santa Marina, also known as Saint Margaret of Antioch: one belongs to the Carmen Thyssen collection in Malaga, another to the National Gallery in London (inv. NG1930).
This type of painting of saints had grown exceedingly popular in Spain's early decades of the 17th C. According to Emilio Orozco Díaz (Temas del Barroco de poesía y pintura, 1947), Zurbarán's saints, and those executed by his studio and followers, are actually portraits "a lo divino" - that is, of ladies who wished to be represented as the saint whose name they bore.
Besides the two aforementioned versions by Zurbarán himself, an extensive number of copies was produced, not in the least by his studio. Amongst the collections that hold variants of Saint Margaret after Zurbarán, we can mention the Konstmuseum in Gothenburg, The Royal Collection Trust in London, and the Barber Institute in Birmingham.

The attributes with which the saint is represented may vary. In this version, the saint is holding the martyr's palm in one hand, and a book in the other, the standard attributes for martyr saints. She is portrayed in a picturesque shepherdess costume, holding a crook and saddlebags. In the lower right corner, we find a dragon. All these elements allude to the saint's life that was narrated in the martyrology of Rabanus Maurus, dating from the 9th C.
According to Rabanus, Saint Margaret lived at the beginning of the 4th C. and was the daughter of a pagan priest. After her mother died in childbirth, she was nursed by a Christian woman and lived in the country, herding sheep with her foster mother. Converted to Christianity, she promised her virginity to God, upon which her father disowned her. Later, when asked in marriage by a Roman governor under the condition that she would renounce her faith, she refused and was subsequently tortured. During her ordeal, several miracles occurred, amongst which her being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon. According to the story, she burst from its belly unharmed, a feat that earned her becoming the patroness of childbirth. Eventually, she was decapitated.