The Presentation of the Ring to the Doges of Venice

Venice built much of its identity on Saint Mark, and this canvas retells one of the city's favourite miracle stories. During a fierce storm in 1340, so the legend went, an old fisherman ferried three saints across the lagoon to drive off demons trying to sink the city. One of them, Saint Mark himself, gave the fisherman a ring as proof and told him to hand it to the doge. Bordone shows that moment, the fisherman kneeling before the enthroned doge inside a sweeping hall of Renaissance arches and marble. He won the commission around 1534 in a contest that Lorenzo Lotto and Pordenone also entered. The deep, exact architecture receding behind the figures is really the showpiece, a Venetian painter demonstrating everything perspective could do.