St. Margaret

Description: Full-figure, almost full, cut-back and hollow depiction of a standing St. Margaret set on a console suspended on a pillar. A prominent console, decorated from the front with a massive volute cartouche preceded from the bottom with a kind of suspended grooved “shell”. Side cartouche decorated with leaves; in its center an oval plaque with a golden inscription on a red background: “In honorem | S. MARGARITHA | Virg. Mart.”. Above the cartouche, the upper part of the console, polygonal, profiled in the form of a cornice, covered with brown marbling. On the upper surface of the console, there is an additional base for the figure in the form of a thick plate (from the front in the middle widened by a small protrusion against which the tip of the foot rests). Margaret is in a dynamic pose, with a spirally twisted silhouette, with the left hip bent. The right leg is strongly put forward, bent at the knee, and the left one slightly withdrawn from the side (extremely abundant and long robes, dramatically billowed and heavily folded “conceal” within themselves the position of the saint’s body). Both feet of the figure are visible partially from under the edge of the robes, clad in full boots. The saint’s head is tilted in the same direction as her hips, turned three-quarters away from the viewer. Feminine, young, elongated face with a long nose is framed by relatively short hair. A loosely arranged scarf is placed over her hair, flowing down the back and in front of the figure’s left shoulder. The saint’s right arm is lowered down, in contact with the body, with the palm placed outside and holding a horizontally arranged cross with a rather long lower arm entwined with palm leaves. The left arm of the saint is bent at the elbow and placed horizontally against the background of the figure slightly above the hips, with the hand shown in an elegant, slightly exalted gesture. The saint is dressed in long, hard-to-stratify robes: a skirt and a coat. At the bottom, by the saint’s right leg, a subdued dragon is resting on the same slab as Margaret, raising its left paw and head with an open mouth. The sculpture is in a white color of polished primer with small golden elements: on a console with the edges of volute forms of a cartouche and some small leaves; within the figure with very small elements (part of the edges of the robes, the cross, the dragon’s collar, and its claws).

History: The figure is one of the nine sculptures of saints placed on the initiative of the Jesuits in 1710 on consoles hung on the pillars of the nave. Each of the sculptures was funded by a different person – the execution of the figure of St. Margaret was financed by the councilor of Świdnica, Johann Löffler to commemorate the chapel dedicated to this saint located at the Kraszewicka Gate.

Characteristics: To refer to the Catholic, medieval past of Świdnica, the Jesuits decided that each figure would represent the patron of one of the chapels placed at the gates leading to the city. The call of St. Margaret, given in the Middle Ages to one of these chapels, which resulted in the execution of a figure of the saint, seemed obvious at that time due to the great popularity of this saint. She was most often depicted together with other virgin martyrs: Barbara, Dorothy, and Catherine, who was referred to in Latin as “Virgines Capitales” – “Great [main, most important] Virgins”. What they also have in common is that more recent research on their lives has revealed that much of the information about them, which in the Middle Ages was considered indisputable truth, had its source in later, sometimes semi-fantastic life stories and popular accounts of miracles. There is little known about St. Margaret. She lived at the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries in Antioch in the Middle East. She was a daughter of a pagan priest and she converted to Christianity. During the so-called Diocletian persecutions, an influential Roman fell in love with her, whom she rejected by declaring that she had devoted herself to Christ. Locked in prison, she was tortured and eventually put to death. The dragon that usually accompanies her represents Satan, who was tempting St. Margaret and was defeated by her thanks to the sign of the Cross. The palm connected to the cross, visible in the sculpture in Świdnica, symbolizes the martyrdom of the saint.