The 14th century sculpture of Saint Theodore is a pastiche: According to tradition the head is a portrait of king Mithridates of Pontus; the body is that of a Roman soldier and dates from Hadrian's times. The crocodile-like dragon has the same iconographic characteristics as Saint George, the cult of which is linked to the protection of marshes and healthy air. --- It was originally at the top of the right column in the Piazzetta of Saint Mark's, next to the column of Saint Mark's lion.

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The 14th century sculpture of Saint Theodore is a pastiche: According to tradition the head is a portrait of king Mithridates of Pontus; the body is that of a Roman soldier and dates from Hadrian's times. The crocodile-like dragon has the same iconographic characteristics as Saint George, the cult of which is linked to the protection of marshes and healthy air. --- It was originally at the top of the right column in the Piazzetta of Saint Mark's, next to the column of Saint Mark's lion.

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The 14th century sculpture of Saint Theodore is a pastiche: According to tradition the head is a portrait of king Mithridates of Pontus; the body is that of a Roman soldier and dates from Hadrian's times. The crocodile-like dragon has the same iconographic characteristics as Saint George, the cult of which is linked to the protection of marshes and healthy air. --- It was originally at the top of the right column in the Piazzetta of Saint Mark's, next to the column of Saint Mark's lion.

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The 14th century sculpture of Saint Theodore is a pastiche: According to tradition the head is a portrait of king Mithridates of Pontus; the body is that of a Roman soldier and dates from Hadrian's times. The crocodile-like dragon has the same iconographic characteristics as Saint George, the cult of which is linked to the protection of marshes and healthy air. --- It was originally at the top of the right column in the Piazzetta of Saint Mark's, next to the column of Saint Mark's lion.

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The Lion sculpture has had a very long and obscure history, probably starting its existence as a winged lion-griffin statue on a monument to the god Sandon at Tarsus in Cilicia about 300 BC.[3] The figure, which stands on the eastern column, at some point came to represent the Lion of Saint Mark, traditional symbol of Saint Mark the evangelist.
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.
Scholarship over the last 200 years variously attributed the provenance of the most ancient parts of the statue to Assyria, Sassania, Greco-Bactria, medieval Venice, and various other times and places. Scientific and art historical studies in the 1980s, however, led to the conclusion that it was created between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd centuries BC somewhere in the Hellenistic Greek or Oriental Greek world. The original bronze figure, taken as a whole, was likely significantly different from the Lion of today; and, predating Christianity, would not have originally had any association with Saint Mark.
It is likely that the statue was assembled into something like its present form by or during the Medieval period. The earliest textual reference to the Lion is from 1293, when it is recorded as having been restored after long neglect.

( Wikipedia )

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