The monument to Santa Margherita da Cortona by the artist Andrea Roggi, erected in the churchyard of S. Marco in Villa, is a powerful addition to the artistic treasures of Cortona and Italian art, both in terms of its construction technique and artistic interpretation of Margherita's spirituality.
First of all, it should be considered that this is the only bronze statue of this size: of the saint at natural height we only have the one in marble, known to all, placed in the square of Cortona Cathedral, and others in wood or plaster.
It should also be emphasised, and this is more important, that while the other statues are of mannerist and devotional workmanship, i.e. they are a kind of portrait of the Saint, the one by Andrea Roggi, while retaining the traditional iconographic features (the checked dress, the famous 'taccolino', taken from the earliest pictorial image we have of the Saint, and the small dog), is the result of his personal interpretation, the fruit of a passion and sensitivity that, availing itself of an exceptional technical ability, managed to capture and artistically represent Margaret's spirituality.
To this end, the sculptor has made use of details that are in themselves quite obvious: one thinks of the dynamics expressed by the mass of the body hovering towards Heaven, with the flaps of the habit at the back honed in flight by the force of the wind, a mystical afflatus that is amplified by the moved position of the feet, naked, to signify the will to cleanse oneself of everything, even the simplest object such as a pair of humble shoes, can represent a link with earthly matter, as well as by the open arms in sign of a total desire to interpenetrate in the God of the Cross, that Cross that like a wound, a wound of repentance and expiation, in significant evidence is represented in his chest.
But the monument is not limited to the bronze part of the Saint's body and her little dog, no, it is grafted onto, and becomes an integral part of, the geometric stone figures of the base on which the sculpture stands, which offer a less obvious reading, because they are strongly symbolic, but no less significant, without which the understanding of the work would be entirely partial. And these figures can be interpreted in a dual register: one, if you like, of a more circumscribed character and inherent to the biographical story of the Saint, the other of a broader character, of universal scope, without which there is no true Art.
Thus the Triangle at the base of the monument can easily bring us back to the three places on which Margherita worked, geographically well identified and skilfully expressed by the undulating and engraved surface, almost as if to realistically portray the hilly nature of the territory on which Margherita lived: Laviano, Montepulciano, Cortona. But we can, indeed we must, read more carefully, transcend the sensible, and then we must observe that the triangle is the first plane figure, the simplest, because it is constructed with the minimum of straight lines; in our case then an equilateral triangle, the most perfect form among triangles. And the tri-angle is substantiated by the mystical number three: the threefold nature of the universe: heaven, earth, man; father, mother, son; in Christian terms, the Trinity and the equality of the three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
And on this foundation rests the Cube, the symbolic representation of stability.
It is not difficult, then, to think of the affluence, the economic solidity of the period happily lived by Marguerite with her beloved, but the cube is also the tangible representation of static perfection, and therefore of Truth, since from whatever perspective one looks at it, it does not change.
In the Trinity the Truth.
And on this stable Truth rests the Sphere, which offers an easy reminder of Margaret's inner intimacy during her last period of penance and purification, but whose meaning expands to identify itself symbolically with the vault of the sky, the world, the celestial bodies, the sun, the primordial form containing the possibilities of all other forms, the cyclical movement that has no beginning and no end, the abolition of time and space: eternity. Trinity, Truth, Eternity.
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