Santa Margherita e il drago

Titian painted this in his old age, in the 1560s, just as the Catholic Church was tightening what artists were allowed to show. The Council of Trent had recently warned against picturing saints' legends that could not be found in scripture, and Margaret's story is exactly that kind of tale, a third-century girl swallowed whole by a dragon, who made the sign of the cross so that the beast burst open and let her step out unharmed. Titian shows that very instant, Margaret climbing free over the split carcass in a green dress and a red drape. He kept the old legend anyway. The idea for the pose he owed to a Raphael painting of the same saint that had reached Venice decades earlier.