ArtSmart Roundtable: The Not-so-Hidden Marble Tetrarchs in Piazza San Marco, Venice

I’m pleased and honored to post my first article for the ArtSmart Roundtable, a group of art-history-loving travel bloggers who post a related article the last Monday of each month.  This month’s topic is Outdoor Sculpture; for more related posts, check out the links at the end, or find us on Facebook here!

So you may notice I write about Venice a lot.  (Understatement?)  I’ve explained why countless times, but I’ve never told one of my favorite art-related Venetian stories.  Now finally with this month’s topic, “Outdoor Sculpture,” the time has come to relate the exciting tale of an oft-overlooked corner of the Piazza San Marco - of the 4 small statues that rest subtely and quietly amid the throngs of people who pass them by without a glance, unawares of their fascinating history.  They also throw into sharp relief something I have always mischeviously loved about Venice – the unabashed, centuries-long record of yoinking art treasures, pieces of buildings and related items from other kingdoms only to deposit it in Venice, never to be returned from whence it came.

Piazza San Marco - straight ahead: the tetrarchs!

Along the canal-facing side of the façade of St. Mark’s Basilica, at or just above eye level, sits one of my favorite pieces in all of Venice.  The Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs, as it is officially known, is a sculpture of – you got it – four figures, who at first glance appear to be a group of dwarf kings hugging each other.  In fact, the sculpture is a respectful depiction of the four rulers of ancient Rome, or tetrarchs, a type of governance instituted by the Emperor Diocletian in 293 A.D.  At the time, the Roman Empire was divided into halves, each with a “senior” (Augusti) and “junior” (Caesars) ruler; the statue symbolizes not specific people of the time, but rather the ideals of the tetrarchy – rule and authority in harmony with each other.  That the pairs are each embracing solidifies this ideal.  When combined with the material (porphyry, an extremely hard and rare purple marble from Egypt) the entire sculpture is a symbol of solidarity, strength and perserverance.  Unfortunately this was not so true to history – quarrels among the tetrarchs led to the entire system breaking down by only 313 A.D.

Though ancient Roman sculpture is largely known for it’s realistic depictions of people – pockmarks, wrinkles, facial features, etc. – the tetrarchs by contrast are generic, expressionless and rather trance-like.  It is thought this was meant to reinforce the order and strength the rulers were to bring to a chaotic empire.

porphyry tetrach statues in the Piazza San Marco

But where are they from?  Here’s my favorite part of the story!  The statues themselves likely originated from the Philadelphion in Constantinople, a Byzantine palace where they were assumed to be part of the porch columns lining the front section of the building.  When the Venetians invaded during the Fourth Crusade (around the year 1200), they pirated the tetrarchs and hauled them back to Venice, where they’ve been attached to St. Mark’s ever since.  Now here’s the funny part: one quick glance at the tetrarchs and you’ll notice one of them is clearly missing a foot (a foot which has been cheaply refashioned in cement or the like).  In the 1960′s a piece of the foot (the heel, to be precise) was unearthed in an excavation near the Bodrum Mosque in Istanbul, where it remains at a nearby museum.

the missing foot!

As Ron White would say, “I told you that story to tell you this story.”  As an art history major in college, I had a very cranky professor who taught all the ancient Greek and Roman classes.  He quickly became my favorite teacher thanks to his oddball stories, told in a crotchedy manner and always peppering otherwise very serious lectures.  He told us when he was a grad student in the ’60s, he had recently been learning about the statues around the time he traveled to Istanbul as a student to visit his professor, who was excavating ancient sites near the city.  While they were there, movement around the site caused the discovery of what would indeed turn out to be the missing foot from the tetrarchs.  How cool, I thought, to be at the real-time discovery of a piece that had been separated from its whole for so many centuries!

I had some doubts in my mind about the veracity of the story, but I never forgot it, and the first time I traveled to Venice I marched straight to the southwest corner of the Basilica di San Marco and saw the still-missing foot for myself.  The approachable, inscrutable and mysterious quartet was like seeing an old friend as I watched a story from the classroom come to life.  Now each time I’m in Venice I stop and pay a visit to my tetrarch pals, stone-faced and unnoticed on the side of the basilica, a memory of a long ago time and a far away place.

Other October ArtSmart Feature Articles:

The Muiredach Cross as Public Art in Medieval Ireland, by Erin at A Sense of Place

Jaume Plensas Outdoor Sculpture by Kelly at Travellius

Paris’ Haunted Père Lachaise Cemetery by Jeff at EuroTravelogue

Has Public Sculture Lost Its Edge? by Ashley at No Onions Extra Pickles

Outdoor sculpture in Florence by Jenna at This Is My Happiness

…and don’t forget to check out the group on Facebook for more!

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