Exhibitions 2
The Lion of Venice (British Museum, till 13 January)
Circus lion
Anthony Samuelson
In April this year the mayor of Venice, Antonio Casellati, wrote to the city's government-appointed superintendent of architecture, asking her to put the winged Lion of St Mark, symbol of Venice, back on his column. Casellati pointed out that nearly five years had elapsed since the lion had been taken down for investigation and cleaning and this explanation for his abs- ence from the top of his column could no longer be sustained in view of the fact that he had been deposited in the Museum of Archaeology for the past two years. To reporters, Casellati said that he felt that with the lion missing from his place the city was mutilated.
The letter won a headline in II Gazzetti- no (on an inside page, true, but every little helps when you are coming up for re- election in a month's time) but seems not to have elicited a response. The superin- tendent had already gone on record 14 months earlier with the forecast that the lion was likely to be back on his column by the end of 1989 and she could hardly be blamed for preserving a discreet silence. The lion has now turned up as the star attraction of the British Museum's Lion of Venice exhibition which opened in London this week as The Spectator went to press. If everything went as planned, the Queen will have been present along with President Cossiga of Italy. The long, black, curly The winged Lion of St Mark: a sorry sight at close quarters locks of Gianni De Michelis, foreign secretary and heavyweight of Venetian politics, will also have been much in evidence. The municipal council was repre- sented by the new mayor, one Ugo Berga- mo. Casellati, who had single-handedly alerted the international Save-Venice- From-Anything-It-Needs-To-B e-Saved- From establishment to the danger of his city being turned by De Michelis into a giant World Expo site, had come off badly in the May poll. The idea of bringing the winged Lion of St Mark to London was thrust upon the British Museum by the Italians. A previous appointment between the Queen and Pres- ident Cossiga in November 1987 on the occasion of the British Museum's Glass of the Caesars exhibition had come embarras- singly unstuck at the last minute when the Italian government fell (as is its way) and Cossiga had had to stay at home. It was obviously going to take a major attraction to get the Queen and the President together in a prestigious encounter. The Lion of St Mark did nicely.
The British Museum's exhibition has spawned a weighty tome which sets out in the most minute detail the research that has been carried out on the lion whilst he has been earthbound but answers almost none of the mysteries that surround the creature. The book, by Professor Bianca Maria Scarfi, contains a wealth of dia- grams, statistics, graphs and tables, and photographs of the lion taken both outside and in. The lion's anatomy is laid bare right down, quite literally, to the last nut and square-headed bolt. It will make fascinat- ing reading for the kind of person who would prefer to take a medical report on Ronald Reagan to bed rather than an account of his presidency.
We still do not know, even so, what the lion was before he was a lion. Was he a horned griffin? A Chinese chimera, perhaps? Or did he start life as a winged lion guarding a heathen funeral monu- ment, lose his wings, and then get new wings — only to lose them again in Paris, whence he had been taken by the light- fingered Napoleon?
Neither do we know when and by whom the lion was made and when and how the Venetians came by him. From what far- flung outreach of the Serenissima was he `liberated'? Did the Venetian mariners cover him in pork and smuggle him out of an East Mediterranean city under the wrinkled noses of the Muslim officials in the same way as — so tradition has it they obtained the body of St Mark, whose other self the winged lion is? Or did they buy him for value (the least likely case!) from, say, Phoenician traders?
Just about the only conundrum sur- rounding the Lion of St Mark which has been answered is why he has been off his column for so long. He was being saved up. Whether the poor beast should be on display in London is questionable. He is a sorry sight with his patchwork of different alloys, buttoned-on wings, bolts protruding through his hide like eczema, paws of odd shapes and sizes, sightless eyes, 'wizard prang!' moustache and a bolt-on hairpiece which gives him the look of a gorilla. He was meant to be viewed from a distance and there is something slightly indecent in the sight of him stranded, minus his opdn book (which was left behind on top of the column) in the front hall of the British Museum. He looks as uncomfortable as does a lion in a circus.
While there have been rumblings among the Venetians about whether the British, in all fairness, ought not to take Nelson down from his column and send him to Venice to be put on display in return, the truth is that most of them do not much care whether the lion is on his column or not. Certainly few of them took advantage of the oppor- tunity to inspect the lion through the viewing holes cut in the side of the wooden cabin in which he was lodged for a few weeks in the courtyard of the Museum of Archaeology, a few paces from St Mark's Square, in the summer of 1989.
It may be, of course, that the Venetians of the present day feel that they have more to worry about than this ageing relic of former glory. They will be all too aware that another inundation from the ocean on the scale of that experienced in November 1966 will leave their city devastated. Every project which might prevent a reoccur- rence has been strangled by the internecine warfare and bureaucratic bungiings of the politicians in Rome.
One supposes that the lion himself will be glad when he eventually finds himself back on his column away from it all. As old Joe would have said, 'He mus' know sumpin' but don't say nuthin'.' From the point of view of President Cossiga and his entourage this is perhaps just as well.
Anthony Samuelson's book A Contempor- ary History of Venice is to be published by Arlington Books next year.
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