Vittore Carpaccio’s Lion of Saint Mark: Venice’s Symbol in the Doge’s Palace

In Venice, the Doge’s Palace stood as the stage of a thousand-year republic. Its truest emblem still roars from the canvas: the winged Lion of Saint Mark. In this painting, every object belongs to a symbolic code, bound to the grandeur of a republic that for a millennium called itself La Serenissima.

La Serenissima

Once upon a time, there was a city called La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic of Venice. “Serene,” of course, did not mean calm. This was a state of merchant fleets, naval battles, and palace intrigues. Venetian expansion extended across the Adriatic, Crete, Cyprus, the Dalmatian coast, and deep into the eastern Mediterranean. The Republic traded in silk, spices, glass, and silver. Its wealth was enough to rival kings and popes.

At its head stood the Doge, elected for life, half prince and half prisoner of protocol. The poor man carried grandeur and shackles in equal measure: forbidden to marry foreign princesses (lest dynasties creep in), never allowed to appear in public alone, not even permitted to open correspondence in private. Leaving Venice was strictly prohibited. Over the course of eleven centuries, 120 doges sat at the helm of the Republic, each more a symbol of continuity than a monarch.

 

And it is in the Doge’s Palace, the great seat of Venetian government, that we meet today’s protagonist: a lion who was anything but serene.

The Doge’s Palace

The history of the Doge’s Palace mirrors that of the Republic itself, full of dazzling triumphs and spectacular disasters. First built in the early Middle Ages, it was repeatedly reshaped. Fires tested it again and again, including the blaze of 1483, when the doge’s apartments were swallowed in flames, and that of 1577, which destroyed the Grand Council Chamber and consumed works by Carpaccio, Bellini, and even Titian. Venice rebuilt, stubbornly keeping the palace’s Gothic soul even when Palladio proposed a new design.

The palace was not only the republic’s glittering stage of politics, but also its shadowy backstage. The palace also contained prisons, a harsh and airless place where inmates were held. By the way, among its most famous prisoners was Giacomo Casanova, the legendary adventurer and lover, who managed a daring escape in 1756. To reach their cells, prisoners were escorted across a covered passage that linked the palace to the Prigioni Nuove, or New Prisons. This walkway soon became known as the Bridge of Sighs, because it was here, through the tiny stone windows, that inmates took their final look at Venice and sighed at the loss of freedom.

As if the walls themselves were not enough, the authorities added a psychological twist. Before interrogations, new arrivals were made to hear terrifying screams, staged by hired actors to mimic the sounds of torture. The prisoner never saw the source. He only heard the cries echoing in the darkness, designed to break his resolve before the questioning even began. In Venice, even justice was theatrical.

The palace walls were long filled with images that proclaimed Venice’s destiny. Fires and time have erased many of them, but in the nineteenth century, the Doge’s Palace gained a work that seems destined for this place: Carpaccio’s mighty Lion of Saint Mark.

Why a Lion?

Of all animals, why a lion for Venice? The answer begins with the Evangelist himself. In Christian tradition, each of the four Gospel writers is represented by a creature: Matthew by a man, Luke by an ox, John by an eagle, and Mark by a winged lion, the animal of courage, vigilance, and resurrection. The roaring lion also echoes the “voice crying in the wilderness,” with which Mark’s Gospel begins.

According to legend, while traveling through the lagoon, Saint Mark was greeted by an angel, who spoke prophetic words:

“Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus.”
“Peace be upon you, Mark, my evangelist.”

The prophecy meant that his relics would one day find rest in Venice. And so it happened: in 828, two Venetian merchants smuggled the saint’s body out of Alexandria, hiding it under layers of pork to fool Muslim guards.  When the relics were laid to rest in the new basilica of San Marco, the prophecy was fulfilled. Venice had its patron and protector.

From then on, the lion of Saint Mark embodied not just the evangelist, but the Republic itself. With paw resting on an open book inscribed with the angel’s words, it became Venice’s eternal logo, stamped on banners, coins, and fortresses from Cyprus to Crete.

Of course, not every lion looked majestic. Medieval and Renaissance artists often painted lions that resembled golden retrievers, fluffy kittens, or vaguely disgruntled cows. Today, many of those “lions” circulate online as memes. Artists of the time had few chances to see a real lion, which explains why many of their painted beasts look more like house cats or farm animals. Still, no matter how odd their faces, the lions of Saint Mark roared a single message: Venice was blessed.

Carpaccio’s Lion of 1516

If earlier Venetian lions sometimes looked like household pets with wings awkwardly glued on, Carpaccio in 1516 finally gave the Republic a beast worthy of its ambition. His lion is colossal, occupying the canvas like a monarch. With his hind legs planted in the water and his forepaws on the land, he embodies Venice’s dominion over both sea and mainland.

The creature’s mane bristles with energy, the jaws part just enough to reveal sharp teeth, and the wings stretch as if ready to take flight. Under his paw lies the open Gospel, inscribed with the angel’s words: “Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus.” It is not just scripture; it is a political statement. Venice was chosen, Venice was protected, Venice was powerful.

Behind the lion’s outstretched wings, tiny ships sail across the glittering sea. This detail is no accident.  Carpaccio places Venice’s fleets literally under the guardian wings of its patron, as if the Republic’s naval might were sheltered by divine protection.

And as if to anchor the vision even further, the background opens onto Piazza San Marco. There is the basilica and the Doge’s Palace, carefully painted in miniature. The message is unmistakable: the lion does not just protect abstract territories, but the very heart of Venice, its sacred and political core.

Some readings also see the lion as a figurative stand-in for the Doge, the Republic’s highest magistrate. The open Gospel echoes the ducal oath to uphold peace and law, the paw set across sea and mainland mirrors the Doge’s duty to balance maritime power with the Venetian mainland, and the sheltering wings suggest the canopy of state under which Venice moved.

In 1516, the Serenissima truly was at its height. It controlled trade routes across the eastern Mediterranean, ruled Crete and Cyprus, and pressed deep into the Italian mainland. Carpaccio’s lion is less a painting than a visual manifesto, a declaration that the Republic’s reach extended wherever the lion’s gaze could fall.

A Botanical Code 

Most visitors, and even many art lovers, rarely pay attention to the plants in a painting. Vegetation is often dismissed as background filler. Renaissance painters thought differently. In their work, not even a fly lands without meaning. Carpaccio didn’t scatter random greenery here. He painted a carefully coded garden.

As art historian Daniele Ferrara notes, Carpaccio sidesteps the usual triumphal tokens of the mainland and builds meaning through plants. Three larger species are set along a fine diagonal that leads the eye toward the Doge’s Palace in the far background, a cityscape view of Piazza San Marco. Ferrara singles out three in particular: mallow with its sturdy stems and pink blossoms, scabiosa with reddish flower heads, and dragontea (dragon arum, also called serpentaria), recognizable by its robust stalk with spadix and attached berry.

Ferrara reads their meaning through official uses and names. Mallow was renowned for its ability to heal wounds and snake bites, so it symbolizes salvation. Scabiosa and dragon arum were both known as remedies, the first against scabies, the second against serpent venom. Together, they both evoke and ward off peril: disease and snakes. In Scripture, and in Dante and Petrarch, scabies often stands for moral corruption, while serpents count among classic demonic signs. The pair of trees, a living evergreen beside a broken dry trunk, sets life against death.

In the end, this narrow strip of meadow reads as a moral miniature rather than an ornament. It speaks of healing and recovery on the mainland, a hope that makes sense in 1516, when Venice, after the wars of the League of Cambrai, was striving to regain and secure her mainland territories.

The Five Coats of Arms

At the bottom of Carpaccio’s canvas, five small coats of arms discreetly line up, almost like signatures. They belong to the Venetian patricians who commissioned the work in 1516. Their office? Not the navy, not diplomacy, not even finance, but the Wine Magistracy, the state body in charge of regulating production and taxation of wine.

So yes, the mighty lion of Saint Mark, guardian of fleets and symbol of empire, was technically sponsored by the men who made sure your glass was full, and that the Republic got its cut from every barrel. It’s a detail that makes the whole picture even more Venetian. Power was built on trade, trade was built on taxes, and taxes were often built on… wine.

In a sense, those five coats of arms remind us that behind the wings of saints and the roars of lions, there were always ledgers, duties, and bureaucrats making sure the Serenissima kept running.

The Fall of the Serenissima

But like all empires, Venice too had to face its twilight. After more than a thousand years of independence, the Republic collapsed in 1797, when Napoleon’s armies marched into the lagoon. The last doge, Ludovico Manin, was forced to abdicate in a solemn ceremony inside the Doge’s Palace. He laid aside the corno ducale (the ducal cap), and with it, the centuries-old dignity of his office.

It was a bitter irony. By protocol, the doge was never meant to abdicate; the post was for life, binding him to the Republic until death. And yet, in the end, Manin became the first and only doge to renounce his office. That was how the Serenissima ended – not with a grand battle, but with a broken rule and a bowed head.

Manin lived only two years after his abdication, retreating into private life, his figure forever shadowed by the melancholy of being the last to hold a title carried by 120 men before him. The Republic of Saint Mark, once feared and envied across the seas, dissolved almost overnight.

The palace, deprived of its role, fell into neglect during the 19th century. Yet even in ruins it remained a symbol of power turned into memory, and of history’s recurring cycles.

The Doge’s Palace: From Ruin to Museum

The Doge’s Palace did not remain in silence forever. In the 19th century, Venice, now part of the Kingdom of Italy, began to restore what centuries of fire, politics, and neglect had scarred. Slowly, the palace regained its voice, transforming from a seat of vanished power into a museum of memory.

Some of its treasures had been there for centuries. In 1523, Cardinal Domenico Grimani donated his remarkable collection of antiquities, paintings, and sculptures, enriching the palace with a humanist’s trove of wonders. Later restorations brought back the glitter of frescoes and gilded halls. And in 1866, Carpaccio’s Lion of Saint Mark, the painting that once declared Venice’s power to the world, finally entered the palace collection, standing as both relic and reminder.

The Final Touch

Today, walking through the Doge’s Palace is like stepping into the living anatomy of a republic with chambers of grandeur, prisons of despair, and bridges of sighs. The Serenissima may be gone, but in the Doge’s Palace, under the lion’s watchful eye, her presence lingers. To stand before him is to feel the entire story of Venice condensed into one image.

And if you cannot yet escape to Venice, there is another way to bring a fragment of that world into your home. The 2025 catalog of the Doge’s Palace painting gallery is a glimpse of the republic’s treasures bound between covers. Within its pages, you will find Titian, Bellini, Quentin Metsys, Vittore Carpaccio, and many others. A small piece of Venice, ready to rest on your own bookshelf.