Comfort & Joy from the Powerful Lion of Venice - Here’s to a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year - 2024

Winged Lion of Venice in Piazza San Marco - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) The mysterious winged Lion of Venice on the top of the column next to Palazzo Ducale in Piazza San Marco is a symbol of Venice's patron saint, Mark the Evangelist. It a testament to the strength of Venice's ability to adapt and survive.

The Lion of Venice came to the Venetian Republic from the world of Byzantium in the 12th century. But the core of the ancient bronze sculpture is much older, dating back to around 300 BC, before Christianity even existed. 

In the 1980s, restorers decided most of its body is about 2,300 years old. Its origins are cloaked in mystery.

It is believed by some that the Lion of Venice started life as a mythical griffin, a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, combining the king of the beasts and the king of the birds into one powerful image. 

It was probably a monument to the god Santa(s), or Sandon, worshiped in the city of Tarsus, which was in the province of Cilicia, in what is now Turkey. It’s where Mark Antony and Cleopatra first met, and where Saint Paul was born. The god Sandon was so powerful that he was worshiped from the 18th century BC to the first century AD.

During the Roman Empire, Tarsus was a "luxurious port city of great wealth and opulence" which became part of the Byzantine Empire until it fell. Luckily, someone snatched the lion and brought it to Venice sometime in the 12th century, saving it from the clutches of the Ottoman Empire -- the precise history is as foggy as the caigo on a Venetian winter’s day.

Then Napoleon came along and grabbed the Lion of Venice, using it to decorate the top of the Fontaine des Invalides in Paris. 

When the Austrians gained dominion over Venice, they and some influential Venetians brought the lion back home to the lagoon. 

The lion was smashed and damaged both on its way to Paris, and on its way back to Venice. After being repaired by Barolomeo Ferrari, it was perched back on its column on April 13, 1816.

The Lion of St Mark on top of a column in the Piazzetta in Venice, seen from the Doges Palace
Author: Peter J.StB.Green

I finally found a scholar who sums up perfectly the feeling I am trying to capture about the Lion of Venice. Thank you Garry Wills! Wills says it started life not as a griffin, but as a winged lion with horns. Here is an excerpt:

"The Lions of Venice"
GARRY WILLS

The American Scholar, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 45-49 (5 pages)

...Seen up close, its face looks partly simian, partly devilish, partly
human - an effect created in part by the placement of its ears on the sides
of its head, not on top. Was it intended by its creators to be a lion?

Restorers at work on it in the 1980s concluded that it was. Studying many
Near Eastern parallels, they found the closest to be the winged and horned
lions that carry a standing statue of Sandon, the tutelary god of Tarsus in
Cilicia.

When that region became Christian, the lion was shorn of its horns
and wings, which removed its pagan onus. It must, even in this early period,
have acquired some sacred meaning, since ancient bronze statues of this size
were almost always melted down for the reuse of their metal....

...The lion has suffered through all the city's vicissitudes over eight centuries of fame and shame, of downfall and recovery. Its silhouette, at dawn or dusk, in mist or glare, gives Venice comfort. Its eerie grin hides a thousand secrets, carried here from its bizarre beginnings and kept faithfully above the city whose identity it guards.

No matter what challenges the New Year will bring, and it appears there are many looming on the horizon, Venice remains under the powerful protection of the mysterious ancient Lion of Venice.

Happy New Year from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog