When the Saints Go Arting In: Ursula

Today I learned about Saint Ursula, a pretty cool lady who hung out with her squad of eleven thousand virgins until they were beheaded by a bunch of Huns, and Ursula herself was shot with an arrow.

While her story may prompt some follow-up questions, I’m just here for the art, which is wild. While very few artists had the time or patience to paint all eleven thousand virgins, many had the skills to depict Ursula as someone who regarded having a couple of organs pierced with an arrow as, at worst, a bit of an inconvenience.

In this picture for example, Ursula seems pretty annoyed at the sudden boob-puncture, but she also looks like she has other things to worry about. Eleven thousand homies all with their periods synced up, for one, or the fact that her posse seems to have been infiltrated by a handful of blokes, including one wearing a MAGA hat.

In this one, thanks to Caravaggio loving a bit of gloom, it’s difficult to see the arrow in Ursula’s chest or how she feels about it, but the archer looks like he’s really rethinking the whole situation and the guy behind her cannot WAIT to watch her get mad about it.

Here though, Ursula’s calmly seeing if a gentle clearing of the throat will dislodge the one and a half foot missile lodged in it. It doesn’t. Hr-hm.

In this one, a whippet waits patiently to see if high-fiving a knight will stop you from being shot by an archer at almost point-blank range while your girls get brutally murdered in the background (it doesn’t).

Happily, not all pictures of Ursula show her being pierced with a lethal weapon, but there seems to be a trade-off. It’s either be depicted dying, or be depicted with a bunch of extremely short virgins under your cape, a stage two goitre, and no chin.

This one by Jean Bourdichon is my favourite, and not for any good reasons at all. Ursula looks like she’s only sarcastically conceding that the archer got her a beauty, right through the corset, the horses behind her show that Bourdichon maybe saw a donkey once from a distance, and all around her are virgins in various stages of violent beheading. It’s spooky but heartening to know that even if your head’s cut off, your halo still glows. I’ve never really thought of halos as wireless before.

So there, that’s Saint Ursula, her arrows, and her virgins. You have to admire her for her ability keep a crew together, her skill in avoiding decapitation, and her talent for holding up the weapon that killed her, staring right at you, and thinking “really?!”

Sorry.