Saint Margaret Holding the Cross

Attributed to Ugolino da Siena (Italian painter, born before 1295, died 1337 or 1347)

Saint Margaret Holding the Cross

Italian (Siena), 1330

Late Medieval

tempera on wood
height 60.9 cm
width 30.5 cm

Portland Art Museum European Collection, 61.41
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Portland Art Museum, Saint Margaret, Siena - Podcast via Vimeo
Cyrus Ghahremani, Autumn O’Neil, and Sanji Zagorodney, Medieval Portland Capstone students, 2010

Amy Rosenberg, Medieval Portland Capstone Student, Winter 2005

The panel painting, St. Margaret Holding the Cross, is attributed to the Sienese painter, Ugolino da Siena and is usually dated to about 1330. This panel now in Portland, was removed from a polyptych (multi-panel) altarpiece painted in the thriving art world of late medieval Siena. Four panels of the polyptych were owned by Johann Anton Ramboux in the mid-19th century and were sold piecemeal in 1866.[1] The painting in Portland should be viewed then as part of a cycle of images that included St. Lucy, (now in Magyar Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest.) and Saints Augustine and Ambrose (now lost. This polyptych is similar in style to altarpieces made by other 14th-century Sienese artists, especially Duccio and his pupil Segna di Buonaventura.

Controversy surrounds the paintings’ attribution, and several artists have been proposed. Ramboux attributed St. Margaret to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, [2] but that attribution was quickly dismissed as the style of this painting and the recognized style of Ambrogio are very different. The work has been attributed to several painters, but is generally agreed upon to be in the “milieu of Segna di Buonaventura,” in which the work of Ugolino can be placed.[3] Contributing to the problem of attribution, Sienese altarpieces were generally produced in workshop settings, with several artists working under a master.[4]

The work of multiple hands is apparent when one compares the two extant pieces from our polyptych--they were clearly painted by different artists.[5] The St. Margaret panel is a half portrait with its subject posed at three-quarters view. The face is sensitively and skillfully modeled, and some of the green underpainting typical in late medieval tempera panel paintings shows through. Her features exhibit the characteristics common at the time, a long slender nose, almond-shaped eyes that look out at the viewer, rounded cheeks, and a small chin. However, her mouth is unusually full, and her brow light. Special attention may have been paid to her facial features because of St. Margaret’s reputation as a great beauty. Her torso is cloaked in an ultramarine blue mantle, embellished with a gold cross pattern that flattens her body. The white scarf about her neck and hanging down the front of her body is delicately modeled and contrasts with the grey-blue of her dress in which brush strokes are clearly visible with some of the underpainting showing through. Slender and slightly tubular hands hold up a long thin cross and a piece of her cloak.

The St. Lucy panel is encased in a matching frame with similar punch designs in the halo. St. Lucy is posed similarly to the Portland saint but faces the opposite direction. The handling of her face and drapery show evidence of the work of an artist other than the St. Margaret painter. The St. Lucy artist used a heavier hand in the lines of her face and hands. The lines are darker and the modeling is less subtle. One of St. Lucy’s hands is covered, and the other is either unfinished or damaged, possibly suggesting that this painter was less experienced or less skilled. The drapery is a cross between western and Byzantine types. Where her shoulder is covered by a cloak, it appears to be lush and patterned with a cross design similar to that of St. Margaret. Where her shoulder is uncovered, the drapery of her dress is presented in the linear, patterned folds favored by early medieval and Byzantine artists.
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The standard for Sienese altarpieces at this time was set initially by Guido da Siena in the latter part of the 13th century and later improved upon by Duccio. The altarpiece in which St. Margaret was placed most likely fell into a type first seen in Duccio’s grand polyptych now in Siena’s Pinacoteca and later in Ugolino di Neri’s (Ugolino da Siena’s) Polyptych at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts.[6] These polyptychs both exhibit series of saints’ portraits framed under arches supported by columns and turned toward the central figure of the Virgin and Christ Child. These altarpieces are topped by piers and pinnacles that contain smaller portraits of saints and angels. The overall appearance of the structures gives the appearance of a nave and clerestory. The architectural setting paired with half-portraits gives the impression of figures in the windows of an arcaded structure. These altarpieces would have aided worshippers in visually following along with the liturgy and would have given them a visual reference to the saints they prayed to for intercession.

Notes
[1] For a complete provenance, see Blocker, 545 and Shapley, 17
[2] Shapley 17
[3] Shapely 17
[4] For a discussion of the style and origin of 14th-century Sienese altarpieces see Norman, 71-123 and Van Os, 63-77.
[5] Stubblebine, 154 figs 473 and 475 and Blocker, 545
[6] Van Os, 65

Suggestions for further reading:

• Bornstein, Daniel. “The Uses of the Body: The Church and the Cult of St. Margherita da Cortona,” Church History 62:2 (June 1993), 163-177
• Blöcker, Susanne, Nicole Buchmann, Gisela Goldberg, Roland Krischel, eds. Lust und Verlust II: Corpus-Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800-1860. Cologne: Hiltrud Kier and Frank Günter Zehnder, 1998
• Norman, Diana. Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (120-1555). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
• van Os, Henk. Sienese Altarpieces 1215-1460: Form Content, Function. Vol.1 (1215-1344). The Netherlands: Bouma’s Boekhuis Bv Groningen, 1984.
• Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel Kress Collection: Italian Schools XIII-XV Century. Vol. 1 of 3. London: Phaidon Press, 1966.
• Stubblebine, James H. Duccio Di Buoninsegna and His School. Vol.1 and Vol. 2. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Background Essay--St. Margaret of Cortona

This saint, St. Margaret of Cortona (or Margherita da Cortona) is the patron saint of childbirth. She was born around 1247 in the Umbrian village of Laviano. She was said to be very attractive and at the age of 16 ran off with a nobleman from Montepulciano. She was never allowed to marry him but had a son by him. After being his mistress for some time, the nobleman was murdered and St. Margaret was said to have discovered his bloody corpse. She was so shaken at having found his body and having nowhere to go that she moved to Cortona where she was taken in by two women who belonged to the lay Order of Penitence. Eventually, St. Margaret was accepted into the Order of Penitence as well and began to live an increasingly ascetic lifestyle. To show penitence for her sins she became a midwife, gave up meat, and lived solely on bread, raw vegetables, and nuts. She shaved her head and had herself dragged through her hometown by the neck while proclaiming her sins. Her confessor says, “no one was ever so greedy for gold…as Margherita was to annihilate her body.” She died in 1297 after a seventeen-day fast. After her death, St. Margaret’s relics became an object of some contention between local factors in the church. Her cult was strong before her death, then after her death her relics became an important and popular pilgrimage point. Cortona is not far from Siena and so a pilgrimage to San Basilio from that city is convenient. The cult of St. Margaret was popular well into the 14th century. In 1335, Ambrogio Lorenzetti was commissioned to create a cycle of images from the life of St. Margaret for San Basilio.

As important as it was to St. Margaret to deny and, in fact, ravage her flesh, it is interesting to note how important her body became. Before her penitence, her body was a vehicle for sin. After the death of her nobleman lover, her flesh was the means of her penitence. After her own death, it was her bones that became an important source of pilgrimage and therefore income for the church. In medieval art as in thought, the body is not important. The body is the prison one inhabits while one waits for death and release from the material world. At the same time, flesh is a source for sin and can be a source for penitence. While it is common for medieval figures in artworks to be patterned abstractions of the human form, it is especially suitable in the case of St. Margaret. Her body in the Portland Art Museum piece is beyond patterned and formless; one can actually see through it. This ethereal quality is a common effect with tempera and gold leaf, but seems especially appropriate for St. Margaret.

Suggestions for Further Reading:

• Bornstein, Daniel. “The Uses of the Body: The Church and the Cult of St. Margherita da Cortona,” Church History 62:2 (June 1993), 163-177.
• Blöcker, Susanne, Nicole Buchmann, Gisela Goldberg, Roland Krischel, eds. Lust und Verlust II: Corpus-Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800-1860. Cologne: Hiltrud Kier and Frank Günter Zehnder, 1998.
• Norman, Diana. Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (120-1555). New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
• van Os, Henk. Sienese Altarpieces 1215-1460: Form Content, Function. Vol.1 (1215-1344). The Netherlands: Bouma’s Boekhuis Bv Groningen, 1984.
• Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel Kress Collection: Italian Schools XIII-XV Century. Vol. 1 of 3. London: Phaidon Press, 1966.
• Stubblebine, James H. Duccio Di Buoninsegna and His School. Vol.1 and Vol. 2. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979.