Saint Margaret and the Dragon

Giulio Romano (Giulio Pippi) (Rome c.1490- Mantua 1546) Raphael (Raffaello Santi)(Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520) About 1518 Now in the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

This painting of St Margaret and the Dragon, now thought to be the work of Raphael in collaboration with Giulio Pippi ( known as Romano), was one of the most important paintings in the collection of the Venetian procurator Michiel Pruili. Basil, Lord Feilding, who from 1634 was English ambassador to the Republic of Venice, acquired three outstanding Venetian collections, including Pruili's, on behalf of his brother-in-law the 3rd Marquis of Hamilton. This purchase was accomplished in spite of competition from Lord Arundel and William Petty, agent for Lord Arundel in Italy at that time. Lord Arundel and Hamilton were two important members of the Whitehall Group of courtier-collectors at the court of Charles I. The painting was one of 12 from the Pruili collection that was bought for 6000 ducats. Before this it had been in the Pruili private collection for over a hundred years. The calculating and elderly Michiel Pruili, one of the nine procurators of St Mark's, was described as a reluctant vendor of his family's pictures. Feilding in his letters to Hamilton related how soon after the sale of the picture the procurator accidentally died tripping on the stairs of St Mark's. The crowds on the streets at St Mark's are reputed to have declared, "It was impossible he should live after he parted with his saint - how soon after the sale of the picture".

This is one of a series of related pictures of Saint Margaret (of Antioch) slaying the dragon by Raphael and Giulio Romano. It may be connected to a commission in 1518 by Pope Leo X for Francois I, King of France, whose sister was the highly accomplished Maguerite Angouleme, Duchess of Alencon, later Queen of Navarre. St Margaret holds the crucifix that the saint used to irritate the insides of the dragon after she was swallowed, forcing the dragon to eject her.