Saint Margaret as a shepherdess Postcard

Saint Margaret as a shepherdess by Francisco de Zurbarán (1631). Zurbarán shows the saint Margaret of Antioch as a shepherdess, holding a crook (referring to the legend that she grazed her nurse's sheep). Behind her is the dragon from whose stomach she burst. The eyes and facial features of the model are identified by some art historians with the model for the same artist's Saint Agatha. Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr (Greek: Ἁγία Μαρίνα) in the East, is celebrated as a saint on 20 July in the Western Rite Orthodoxy, Roman Catholic Church and Anglicanism, on 17 July (Julian calendar) by the Eastern Orthodox Church and on Epip 23 and Hathor 23 in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread of her following. Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints Joan of Arc claimed to have spoken with.