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The columns of San Marco and San Tòdaro, or columns of Piazza San Marco, in Venice, are two tall carriages in marble and granite, placed at the entrance to the St Mark's area towards the pier and the San Marco basin. They are surmounted by the statues of the patron saints of the city: Mark the Evangelist in the traditional form of a lion and San Tòdaro (Venetian name of the Byzantine Theodore of Amasea), while on the bases they have high reliefs depicting the trades that were carried out in the square.
The two columns, together with the docks of Palazzo Ducale and the
Marciana Library, constitute the monumental access to the square for
those coming from the sea.
According to tradition, the columns
were erected by Nicolò Barattiero under the Doge of Sebastiano Ziani
(1172-1178), when the square was enlarged and monumentalised. The
enormous columns, transported from the East as spoils of war, were
originally to be three, but the third carriage was lost together with
the ship that carried it during the landing. The shipwrecked column had
to sink deeply into the mud of the seabed, so much so that "looking for
it twenty years after the sinking by a specially appointed master, by
feeling the bottom with a long pole, it could not be found in any way".
However, more recent interpretations date the erection of the
columns to the second half of the 13th century. The marbles of the two
columns (Egyptian red marble for the column of S.Todaro and Troadense
marble for the column of S.Marco) were widely used for the erection of
columns in late antiquity, a fact which makes their origin from
Constantinople almost certain . Therefore it is extremely probable that
the arrival of the columns in Venice, as for most of the Byzantine
remains present in the lagoon, can be traced back to the period of the
Latin Empire of Constantinople, between 1204 and 1261.
The bases
are made of Istrian stone, a material that began to be used in Venetian
construction starting from the last quarter of the 13th century, after
the closure of the Greek marble markets following the reconquest of
Constantinople by the Byzantines. In the bases there are high reliefs
depicting trades, evidence of the period prior to the monumentalization
of Piazza San Marco in the 16th century: before the 16th century, the
square was the site of intense economic activity. The reliefs were made
in a "realistic" style, which arrived in Venice in the second quarter of
the thirteenth century and of which various works can be observed in the
decorations of the Basilica: among these in particular the reliefs of
the bases are indebted to the representations of the crafts of the arch
greater, even if their lower quality suggests that they are not the work
of the same master.
Even the style of the capitals of the columns
seems to confirm the dating of the erection of the columns to the 13th
century. They are made of Veronese stone with pink streaks and are in
the Venetian-Byzantine style, as confirmed by their resemblance to
Ruskin's second and third styles. The capitals of the columns are also
very similar to the decorations of the tomb of Denaro Odifredi in
Bologna, built around 1265 by Venetian workers.
The column that
stands on the side of Palazzo Ducale holds the winged lion, symbol of
San Marco, patron saint and symbol of the city and the Venetian state
since 862. It is a very ancient Greek or Syrian bronze sculpture,
probably originally a chimera, to which wings were later added. On the
side of the Library is, however, that of San Teodoro, Byzantine saint
and warrior, first protector of the city, depicted in marble in the act
of slaying a dragon. The bust comes from a classical statue of a Roman
emperor, while the head, the halo, the arms and the legs resting on the
slain dragon are from the Middle Ages. The sculpture is a copy of the
original exhibited at the entrance to Palazzo Ducale. According to a
legend reported by Sansovino in the 16th century, the lion of S. Marco
looks east to symbolize the role of Venice as protector of Christianity
in the East, while the statue of S. Teodoro facing west would symbolize
the defensive attitude of the Serenissima towards the Land. This
explanation of the different orientation of the two statues is evidently
prior to the 16th century (at the time the Serenissima had already
established the Dominion in the Mainland) and therefore would date back
to the era prior to the 14th century, probably to the period prior to
the fall of Acre in 1291 .
Under the columns, in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance, wooden shops were placed, however already from the
mid-eighteenth century the space between the two stelae was destined for
the place of capital executions, so much so that the superstitious use
still persists among the local population not to cross the clearing
between the columns. A Venetian way of saying also derives from this
use: "Te fasso veder mi, che ora che xe" (I'll show you what time it
is), derived from the fact that those sentenced to death, with their
backs to the basin of San Marco last thing they saw was the clock tower.
The space between the two columns was also the only "free zone", in
which it was legal to gamble, a privilege granted to Nicolò Barattiero
(or Barattieri), or the one who managed to find a way to erect the heavy
structures left stretched out on the ground for a long time: through the
use of large ropes that were fixed to the end of a column and then wet,
which, as they dried, exerted such a traction as to allow them to be
raised a few centimeters and to insert wooden wedges underneath, the
builder from Bergamo, who had already distinguished himself in the
construction of the belfry of the bell tower of San Marco, thus
accomplished the task of lifting the heavy columns without damaging
them. As a reward, he was granted the exclusive right to gamble at the
foot of the two columns, which allowed him to become quite rich.