Rubens: The Crowning of Saint Catherine

Peter Paul Rubens' painting focuses on the Christian story of a vision experienced by Saint Catherine of Alexandria. She saw the infant Jesus on his mother Mary's lap offering himself as Catherine's spiritual bridegroom.

Artists have traditionally represented the subject by showing the Christ Child placing a ring on Catherine's finger. Rubens creates his own version: Christ crowning Catherine with laurel to symbolize her purity and victory over the forces of evil.

The Virgin Mary is seated on an arbor-like throne in an enclosed garden (symbolic of her purity), the infant Jesus on her lap. She wears red to symbolize her future suffering at the death of her son and blue symbolizing her role as Queen of Heaven.

Catherine of Alexandria, who lived in Egypt in the early 4th century CE, kneels before Mary and the Christ Child, holding the palm frond symbolic of martyrdom. She refused a proposal of marriage from the Roman emperor because of her Christian faith, so she was sentenced to die on a spiked wheel.

When lightning miraculously struck the wheel (symbolized here by the cherub holding a bundle of glowing lightning bolts), Catherine was instead beheaded, becoming one of the Catholic Church's virgin martyrs.

Like Catherine, Apollonia was a virgin martyr from Alexandira, Egypt, where she lived in the 3rd century. Seized during a violent demonstration against Christians, she was tortured by having her teeth shattered and pulled out.

She is holding the iron pincers that did the job.

Wishing to preserve her chastity, Margaret of Antioch refused to marry a Roman official. So he had her tortured and thrown into a dungeon. There, Satan in the form of a dragon swallowed her whole.

The cross she held caused the dragon to burst open, and Margaret emerged unharmed, though she was eventually beheaded. Here she's shown holding the doglike dragon by a leash.