The sculpture of the great winged lion in bronze that has guarded for centuries St. Mark’s Square and the whole lagoon of Venice, positioned at the apex of a column facing the sea called precisely the Column of San Marco, may not actually be Venetian, but Chinese. Moreover, it probably does not even depict a lion. The study of two university professors from the University of Padua (Massimo Vidale and Gilberto Artioli), in fact, indicates that the work would not be attributable to the Hellenistic art of the 4th century BC, of Tarsus, in Anatolia, as has been believed for hundreds of years, but it would be a a work made in China between the 8th and 9th centuries which portrays not a winged feline but a mythological creature called Zhenmushou. At the moment it is not a certainty, but the research evidence seems quite convincing: let’s see it.
The theory of the Chinese origin of the Lion of St. Mark
The two professors from the University of Padua, the archaeologist Max Vidaleof the Department of Cultural Heritage, and the geologist Gilberto Artioliof the Department of Geosciences, presented their studies at the conference promoted by Ca’ Foscari University Marco Polo, the book and AsiaThe two came to the conclusion that the lion of San Marco could be Chinese through some isotopic analysis: “Between 1985 and 1990 the statue was restored and studied very well and from those studies our research began”, said Massimo Vidale. “Many doubts have always surrounded the statue, so we took it out of the drawer three samples never analyzed beforewe compared them with six others previously studied and with our database. Today the University of Padua has a sort of telephone directory of all the lead isotopes present in the copper mines in Europe and Asia. Each mine has a specific ratio between these two elements and so we obtained a proof of the origin of the copper with which the bronze of which the statue of the Lion is made was produced, which corresponds to thelower Yangtze River basin areain China”.
The winged lion of Venice is not a lion, but a Zhenmushou
The sculpture, until now traced back to the Hellenistic art of the fourth century of Tarsus in Anatolia, has instead been linked to Chinese artistic production, and probably to the time of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). This is a hypothesis given by some stylistic comparisonswhich indicate that it was not a chimera with lion parts but a Chinese fantasy animalthe Zhenmùshòu, with the role of “tomb guardian” placed to guard the ancient burials of kings and aristocrats in the Shanghai region. “The head part, the mane, the chest are stylistically compatible with the Tang periodbetween the eighth and ninth centuries, and here is the proof: the prominent nose, the moustache, the wide open mouth with the two upper canines well open, the bridge of the nose and the two strong orbital prominences. Probably originally there were two horns and the ears were also cut off”, added the archaeologist.
But how did the statue get to Venice, on top of the column of San Marco? The scholar recalled that it could not have been Marco Polo because when he returned to Venice in 1295 the “lion” was already on the column: however, it could have been Polo’s father and uncle, Matteo and Nicolòwho were in turn in Beijing at the court of the Great Khan between 1264 and 1266. “It is possible,” said Vidale, “that it was they who saw the pieces of this great statue, dismembered and reassembled, and brought it to Venice to be transformed into a lion, with the usual Venetian unscrupulousness.”
