St. Simon
17th century
St. Stephen's Cathedral, Passau, Germany
This statue and one of St. Jude Thaddeus flank the altar in the Conversion of Paul chapel. The two saints are often paired and share the same feast day. They are identified by a label at the side of the chapel and in Jude's case by the cudgel that is his attribute. But if it were not for the label and the Jude statue one would never recognize this as St. Simon. True, a book is among St. Simon's attributes, but it is too common to be an identifier. There is no bucksaw, universally recognized in the 17th century as this saint's attribute, and the bird at his right foot would not identify him. I have not found any mention of a bird in the St. Simon legends, and the nearest thing to a precedent in the art is the Simon and Jude statues in Oviedo Cathedral's 12th-century Holy Chamber, which stand on
harpies.
birds with human heads
All the Apostles in that room stand on human and animal forms that are clearly just decorative in intent.
I am dating the statue as 17th century because that is when the present cathedral was built and furnished and secondarily because of the style.
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Photographed at the cathedral by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.