Die heilige Margareta von Antiochia

Zurbarán painted this in 1631, working in Seville at the height of Spain's golden century, and the surprise is how little it looks like a martyr's portrait. Saint Margaret was said to have been cast out by her pagan father and set to tending sheep, so Zurbarán dresses her as a real Spanish shepherdess of his own day: a lambskin jacket, a straw hat tipped at an angle, a woven saddlebag of the kind country weavers actually made, a crook and a small prayer book in her hands. You could pass her in a market. Then you notice the low shape at her feet, the snarling dragon that legend says swallowed her whole before she burst out unharmed. She doesn't look at it. She looks straight out at you, calm, while the beast waits in the dark beside her skirts.