Saint Mark

Giorgio Vasari

National Gallery of Art

A pale-skinned, muscular man sitting and reading a book as a lion rests at his feet fills this vertical painting. The man’s knees are angled slightly to our right but his torso twists back to the left. His head follows that direction so he’s almost in profile as he looks at the book, which he holds up to our left. His brows are deeply furrowed, and he has a bumped, blade-like nose. He has short, copper-red hair and a squared beard. He wears a tunic and knee-lengths pants that shimmer in shades of topaz blue and pearly white under a carnation-pink cloak that drapes from his shoulders and across his thighs. A round, gold pin holds the cloth in place on his left shoulder, to our right. His lower legs and feet are bare. He rests the heel of one foot on a rounded plinth and lifts the toes so they come at us. The other knee bends deeply and the toes of that foot perch lightly behind the first leg. The man leans to our right to look at the open book, which he holds in both arms to the left. Visible text on the far page reads, “ANGELVS DESCENDIT EVO.” He braces a black inkpot and spindly white feather quill in one hand and holds a pair of pince-nez glasses with the other. The lion is small in comparison to the man and has a curly mane and translucent gray wings. The background is dark except a strip off-white floor along the bottom edge.