Saint Luke And Saint Mark In Marble - Italy - 14th Century

We find two splendid high reliefs representing Saint Luke and Saint Mark with their allegorical form of the tetramorph. Luke is represented by a winged bull. We see him in profile, in a mid-length robe, holding an open book, called a missal. He seems to be writing on it, perhaps the gospel. Under the book, is represented the winged bull, his symbol. We notice the inkwell that he holds at the top right in his other hand. Saint Luke was a doctor as well as a companion of Saint Paul. In tradition, Luke is the patron saint of doctors, artists and sculptors. We find Mark, also in profile, but this time from the other direction. He is holding a book, more specifically, a missal that he is consulting. In the same representation, the winged lion which is his symbol is placed under the book. In the New Testament, the gospel of Mark is shorter and the oldest. It would be a source for the writing of those of Matthew and Luke. His gospel begins with the preaching of Saint John the Baptist in the desert, so his symbol is the lion, the animal of the desert. This symbol represents courage and elevation. Mark is the patron saint of the city of Venice. He is said to have died a martyr. These two sculptures correspond to each other. He must originally have had the two other missing evangelists, Saint Matthew and Saint John. We find the two high reliefs in the sales catalog "The Clemente Collection". A collector from the end of the 19th century in Florence, we can see a photo of the works in the catalog listing his collection. They bear the numbers 474 and 473. The New Testament is mainly made up of the four gospels. These texts were written by the four evangelists: Matthew, Luke, Mark and John. They are the only ones who have been canonized by the Christian churches. The four evangelists are most of the time represented in allegorical form, called "tetramorphic". Luke (the bull), Matthew (the eagle), John (the man) and Mark (the lion). The sculptural style of the two high reliefs can be linked to the work done by Giovanni Pisano, who is already attributed in the sale catalogue. Giovanni Pisano is considered one of the greatest Italian architects and sculptors. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Nicolas Pisano, the initiator of a movement of Italian sculpture that abandoned Byzantine molds, with whom he became a collaborator. His sculptures constitute one of the most significant cycles of European Gothic sculpture. Our two high reliefs can be linked to his style, probably to someone in his entourage. Indeed, the evangelists is a subject that we find in Pisano with the example of Saint Luke and Saint Mark that we find in the Del Duomo Museum in Pisa. Here we find the two evangelists Saint Luke and Mark with at their side the representation of their tetramorphic symbols. The arrangement of the elements being different, the set of sculptures is very similar. We also see the missal that each Saint holds. The marble duo of Saint Luke and Saint Mark is an exceptional sculptural ensemble that responds to each other. Despite the lack of the last two evangelists who must surely have been part of it, these two high reliefs find an artistic style similar to the work of Giovanni Pisano, which allows us to attribute them to a sculptor from his entourage, as seen in the sales catalog "the Clemente collection".