A Stained, Painted and Leaded Glass Window Light Saint Margaret of Antioch, standing figure, palm in left hand, eyes lowered, dragon at feet, daisies on dress, blue drapery background, square quarries above, coloured rose and crown borders, 68cm wide, 138cm high. St Margaret was a fourth century saint, who was cast out by her father, a pagan priest, when she converted to Christianity. According to the Golden Legend, a medieval compilation of saint’s biographies, she was devoured by Satan disguised as a dragon. She subsequently burst from the beast’s stomach, unharmed, and later became the patron saint of childbirth, and is depicted in the window with the dragon at her feet. The saint was a subject Burne-Jones returned to repeatedly in his stained glass designs, creating numerous variations. The first was made for St Peter’s Church in Bramley, West Yorkshire, which is recorded in the Morris & Co. Catalogue of Designs for Stained Glass, and sixteen others are known today. However, the closest match to the present panel is in a watercolour design in the Huntington Library collection in California for three windows of female saints for All Saints Church in Winnipeg, Canada. An inscription on the drawing by its previous owner, architect Sanford Berger, notes that only the central panel of St Hilda was completed and installed, and indeed the window still resides in the church’s Lady Chapel. Whilst the St Margaret of Antioch window lacks the top panel and the inscription to the foot of the window, the rose and crown detail down each side is an exact match to that found in the St Hilda window, both of which vary slightly from the original drawing.
This figure was originally designed as St Ursula for The Church of St John the Baptist, Tuebrook, Liverpool, in 1868. John Henry Dearle re-drew her face, replaced the spear with a palm and added a dragon at her feet. Presumably he preferred to adapt the 1868 design, rather than use the more animated St Margaret, Burne-Jones had designed in 1881, for St Peter's Church, Bramley, West Yorkshire, because he wanted to create continuity with the other two figures of St Helena of the True Cross (originally designed in 1875) and St Hilda (designed as St Radegunda for All Saints' Church, Cambridge in 1866).