Santa Margherita e il drago

By around 1518 Raphael was the most sought-after painter in Rome, running a large, busy workshop and juggling commissions for two popes at once. Pictures went out under his name that his assistants, among them the gifted Giulio Romano, had a real hand in, and this Saint Margaret is one of them. The saint steps calmly out of a dark wood while the dragon rears behind her. In the legend she had been swallowed whole by the beast and burst out alive from its belly, which is why women prayed to her in childbirth. The panel later belonged to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the great Habsburg collector, and it has hung in the imperial gallery in Vienna ever since.