The Lion of St. Mark's Square in Venice Is Chinese
44 comments
·October 24, 2024crazygringo
hinkley
Would it have come over the spice roads all the way from eastern china or would it have been pirate loot sold in Mumbai and then fenced farther west?
082349872349872
being fenced would explain why it's been through a chop shop
(we call them "chop shops" in english because they used to file off the chops and serial #s the eastern chinese oems engraved on their statuary)
umeshunni
> pirate loot sold in Mumbai
Hate to nitpick, but Mumbai didn't exist in those times - it was a group of islands and not a major port.
Major trading ports of India at the time were Muziris, Goa, Surat etc.
FlyingSnake
While Mumbai in it’s current form didn’t exist, western India had many important ports like Sopara and Chaul in the same region.
mr_toad
> There is no historical record of when or how the lion arrived in Venice, but it was already installed atop the column in St. Mark’s Square by the time Marco Polo returned from China in 1295.
Venice had trade agreements with the Mongol empire for decades prior to that. It’s not hard to imagine that the Mongols took it from China and traded it to Venetian merchants.
stelliosk
The lion may be Chinese but the four horses in St Mark's Basilica are Greek looted from Constantinople during the fourth crusade (1204).
Perhaps the lion was also looted and brought to Constantinople originally which would fit with pre Marco Polo's travels.
sbdhzjd
Looting a collapsing empire just across the Mediterranean is easy.
Looting an empire halls way across the world is a tad harder.
Leary
"Further proof arrives through the holes in the sculpture’s head, which researchers believe would have once held horns, and ears which have been rounded off. The sculpture, which is known to have arrived in parts and reassembled, was essentially modified to look more lion-like."
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bronze-venice-lion-from-ch...
jakub_g
> Lead isotope analysis of the bronze alloy provided indisputable evidence of the Chinese origin of the materials used in the statue.
Is there some more detailed source explaining how this conclusion was reached? What's distinct about Chinese lead / how this kind of evaluations are done?
Isamu
The original article translated from Italian puts it this way:
>the results indicate that the colossal statue is most likely an elaborate reassembly of what was initially a zhènmùshòu (镇墓兽 "keeper of tombs") fused in the Tang period (609-907 AD) with copper from the mines of the lower basin of the Yang-tze River, the Blue River in southern China. This is confirmed by accurate analyses of lead isotopes, which leave in the bronze unmistakable traces of the original mines from which the copper was extracted.
The implication is that the mines themselves have different isotope signatures that have been established in previous archaeological studies.
ceejayoz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_analysis_in_archaeolog... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lead
Rebelgecko
I think they're looking for a study that was done on this particular item, not just info about isotopes in general
There's some more info on the lion's measurements here, but I haven't been able to find the study that was presented in September
https://journals.iucr.org/j/issues/2024/03/00/in5093/in5093....
wizzwizz4
Those links do not answer the question, separately or combined.
sct202
This one is specific to Chinese lead isotopes. Many Chinese bronzes have elevated levels of radiogenic lead. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30275-2
ceejayoz
They absolutely do answer the question.
tedk-42
As an Asian person having grown up with a bit of South Chinese culture, it does appear a bit like a Chinese lion statue, but the wings really throw it off for me.
paganel
Could be that the wings are a later addition, like they might have been added in the 1100s-1200s in Venice or those whereabouts.
UberFly
Went looking for more info. Some good pics of where this is in Venice:
https://www.guidedtoursinvenice.com/en/blog/a-guided-tour-in...
__bax
and Mona Lisa is italian
walrus01
To me the face and mane of the lion resemble artwork/designs I've seen from historical Iranian-adjacent/Persian empire related sites all along the historical maximum extent of the Farsi speaking world, much of which overlaps with the historical land based trade routes to/from western China.
empath75
Keep in mind that this statue was broken and reassembled several times so it probably doesn't look very much like the original Chinese version any more. In particular, the wings aren't original.
Apocryphon
Gavin Menzies would've had a field day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies#1434:_The_Year_a...
WorkerBee28474
Except for the dates:
> There is no historical record of when or how the lion arrived in Venice, but it was already installed atop the column in St. Mark’s Square by the time Marco Polo returned from China in 1295.
Apocryphon
Then he would have an excuse to come up with an even wilder theory of earlier contact
From Wikipedia:
The Lion sculpture has had a very long and obscure history, probably starting its existence as a funerary statue called zhènmùshòu (镇墓兽 in Simplified Chinese, literally “tomb guardian”) in medieval China, during the reign of the Tang Dynasty.
...The Lion, in its present form, is a composite of different pieces of bronze created at very different times, building upon ancient "core" components. It has undergone extensive restoration and repair work at various times.
...More recent studies, however, suggest that the statue likely comes from the regions near the lower course of the Yangtze River, in eastern China, and was probably cast sometime in the period from the 7th to the early 10th century CE, during the reign of the Tang Dynasty. The original bronze figure, taken as a whole, was likely significantly different from the Lion of today...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Venice