ABSTRACT
The famous “St. Mark’s Lion” now located in the Piazzetta of Venice is probably the greatest enigma in the relatively sparse repertoire of great ancient bronzes. A critical re-assessment of the state of the art, together with additional stylistic comparisons and historical considerations, indicate that the ancient Chinese art styles and iconography used arethe roots of the unusual facial features of the ‘Lion’. Further, lead isotopes analyses of the metal in the earliest cast parts of the statue strongly support the hypothesis of a Chinese origin creating a link across the Eurasian Silk Road. The new involved narrative, therefore, surprisingly tells us about the possible import from China to Venice of an earlier enormous statue of a winged hybrid monster, in the framework of the twelfth-century official replacement of the Byzantine urban cult of St. Theodore with that of St. Mark.
