St. Mark presents his standard to Venice

Every Venetian who saw this in 1531 knew the figure in it on sight. Mark the Evangelist was the patron saint of the city, his supposed relics resting under the basilica on the main square, his winged lion flying on the Republic's banners across a trading empire. Here he hands that standard to Venice herself, shown as a figure receiving the flag, so the picture states plainly where the city believed its authority came from. It was painted for the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi beside the Rialto, the working home of the Republic's financial officers, who passed images like this every day. Bonifazio gives the saint the warm colour and the steady, grave bearing that Venetian painting had settled into by the 1530s.