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Saint Ursula’s Passion, l999
Oil on linen, 60 x 80”
Gift of the artist

Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk in which a chapter is devoted to the virgin martyrs inspired this painting. Norris suggests that the virgin martyrs were the first feminists, because they were women who defied male authority; were willing to die for their faith; viewed their bodies as sacred and exercised control of them. Phipps, in Saint Ursula’s Passion, depicts four women and their dog under the protection of an apparition of the virgin martyr. Spiritual and physical powers are evident in their defiant stances, otherworldly gazes, and their suite of voodoo drums. These women seem to guard the sacred and the domestic spaces that make up their domain, and that are visible through the doorways that flank them.

The legend of St. Ursula holds that she was the daughter of a Christian British king who promised her in marriage to a Pagan ruler in Brittany, whereupon she asked for and received a three year delay during which she sailed, accompanied by eleven thousand virgins, throughout Europe. In Rome, she was joined by Pope Cyriacus (missing from the papal roster). When the three years were up, a miraculous storm arose and swept her and the eleven thousand virgins (the number varies) into the hands of the Huns who slew all of them because of their faith. St. Ursula and the virgin martyrs came to be venerated at the Church of St. Ursula at Cologne in Germany. In this hemisphere, Christopher Columbus named the Virgin Islands after St. Ursula and her 10 virgin martyrs. Later in l535, devoted admirers of St. Ursula founded the Order of Ursalines. Ursaline convents with black nuns existed in Haiti and in New Orleans, Louisiana.