The emblematic statue of the winged lion in Venice can actually come from the Chinese Tang dynasty, the results of the study
A bronze statue of a winged lion that has long honored the center of Piazza San Marco in Venice comes from a distant country, according to a new study. It was made in China As a guardian of the grave over 1,000 years ago and may have been imported into Italy by Marco PoloThe father of Silk Road in the 13th century found the researchers.
“Venice is a city full of mysteries, but we were resolved: the” lion “of Saint-Marc is Chinese, and it has traveled the Silk Road”, co-author of the study Massimo Vidalsaid an archaeologist at the University of Padua, in a statement.
In the study, published Thursday, September 4, in the journal AntiquityVidale and his colleagues identified the source of the bronze used to create the emblematic lion, which became an official Venice symbol in the early 120s but whose exact origins were troubled.
The researchers examined a series of nine samples from different parts of the lion and used mass spectrometry to identify the ratio of lead isotopes in metal. Metal alloys like bronze – which is a mixture of copper and tin – contain small amounts of lead, the researchers have written in the study, and the variations in lead atoms can indicate the geological source of copper.
By comparing the lead isotopic ratios of the Venetian lion to global reference databases, the researchers have narrowed the origin of the bronze at the Chang River (Yangtze) in what is now China. This region of eastern China has Large -scale deposits of several large minerals, including iron, copper, zinc and gold. These deposits were used for other artefacts; For example, a previous study By another research group, has shown that an artifact of the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1050 BC) has the same lead isotope signal as the Venetian lion.
The revelation that bronze is from China can help explain some of the strange stylistic choices in the Venice lion, suggested researchers; It is not like other medieval lions from 11th to 14th centuries found in Europe.
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But the Venice lion has similarities with Chinese art of the Tang dynasty (AD 618 to 907) – in particular “Zhavensmushò“Or” falls guardians “, according to the study. These monumental statues often represent hybrid creatures with muzzles and manes in the shape of lion, sharp ears, horns and raised wings. The Venice lion has several of these characteristics, as well as metal” scars “where one or two horns may have been removed.
A possible explanation of the Venice Lion, suggested the researchers, rests with the Venetian merchants Niccolò and Maffo Polo, the father and the uncle of Marco Polo. In the 13th century, the brothers crossed the Silk Road and set up trafficking posts, finally reaching the city known today as Beijing and spending four years in the Kublai Khan Court. Perhaps the polo shirts met a statue of “guardian of the tomb” which corresponded to their notion of what a lion looked like, proposed the researchers.
In the 13th century, when the Republic of Venice controlled the eastern commercial roads, its symbol was a winged lion resting on the water with the Gospel of Saint-Marc, the patron saint of Venice, under its legs. This imagery, which also appeared on the flag of the Republic, symbolized The domination of Venice over the seas.
“In the general effort to spread the [Venetian] The new powerful symbol of the Republic, the polo shirts may have had the somewhat cheeky idea of reading the sculpture in a plausible winged lion (seen from afar), “wrote the researchers. The merchant brothers may have returned the statue to Venice in the rooms, trusting a local metal worker to renovate it in the symbol now associated with Saint-Marc.
“Of course, this is only a possible scenario based on the intersection of historical and archaeometallurgical data,” wrote the researchers. “The word now goes back to historians.”
