Winged mystery: Was the iconic Lion of Venice sculpture made in China?

The Lion of Venice has stood over the city’s Piazza for more than seven centuries. A symbol of political authority, the bronze statue even appears on the flag of the Republic.

A new study, however, indicates that the famous winged lion representing Venice was actually made in China.

Researchers say the sculpture followed a fascinating route that may have involved Marco Polo’s father and the court of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.

According to findings set to be published in the journal Antiquity, experts from the University of Padua discovered that the copper ore used to create the Venetian winged lion came from the Yangtze River basin in China.

The study also indicates that the lion has features similar to statues that once guarded tombs during the Tang Empire, which ruled China between AD 618 and 907.

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Today, millions of visitors each year walk beneath the Lion of Venice, which looks across the Venetian Lagoon from its perch on a column in Piazza San Marco.

The lion’s mysterious past

Much about this symbol of the Venetian Republic is still unknown.

The statue shows signs of having existed long before it was placed near Saint Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace.

Over time, its ears were cut shorter, its wings were altered, and at one stage, it even had horns that were later removed.

“We don’t know when the sculpture arrived in Venice, where it was reworked, who did it, or when it was erected on the column where it is still visible today,” said Massimo Vidale, an archaeologist at the University of Padua and co-author of the new study.

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The only historical record that refers to the statue is from 1293, when it was already damaged and required repair.

According to the study, the violet granite used for the column that holds the lion may have come from Constantinople, now Istanbul, after the city was looted, and likely reached Venice shortly before 1261.

To trace the sculpture’s past, Italian researchers studied lead isotopes in material collected during a restoration in 1990. Their findings showed that the copper ore used to make the lion had been mined in the Yangtze River basin in China.

This origin is far further east than earlier ideas, which suggested it came from a 12th-century Venetian workshop, or from Anatolia or Syria during the Hellenistic age.

Lion or ‘zhenmushou’?

It may not actually be a lion at all.

It more closely resembles tomb guardian sculptures called “zhenmushou” from China’s Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD), the researchers said.

“These hybrid creatures share leonine muzzles, flaming manes, horns and raised wings attached to the shoulders, pointed upraised ears and, sometimes, partially humanised facial features,” according to the study.

It is thought that the horns were later taken off and the ears trimmed to make it resemble the lion of Saint Mark.

The symbol is seen everywhere in Venice, from buildings to coins. It is also the emblem of the Venice Film Festival’s highest award, the Golden Lion.

Although made from different material, the zhenmushou sculptures that are still around look very similar to the Lion of Venice, particularly its “bulbous nose”, the study added.

How did the sculpture reach Venice?

Perhaps in the luggage of Niccolo and Maffeo Polo, the father and uncle of the famed Venetian explorer Marco Polo, the researchers theorised.

Around 1265, the travelling merchants visited the court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in Khanbalik, modern-day Beijing.

They could have stumbled on the sculpture there, the researchers said.

Just years earlier the Republic of Venice had adopted the lion as its symbol, and “the Polos may have had the somewhat brazen idea of readapting the sculpture into a plausible (when viewed from afar) Winged Lion,” the study said.

They could have then sent the sculpture to Venice along the trade route known as the Silk Road.

That was not the end of its travels. After French general Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Venetian Republic in 1797, he moved the winged lion to Paris.

Broken into pieces, it did not return to Venice until 1815.

With inputs from AFP