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made
in marbles polychromatic; in the center of the architrave
we can admire a bronze and silver cross with the Madonna,
St. John and the 12 Apostles on its sides, masterpieces
of Jacobello and Pier Paolo Dalle Masegne (1396). The
altar keeps the urn with the mortal remains of St.Mark:
the mortal remains were found in 1811 into a stone of the
crypt during some works of restoration. The ciborium with
canopy is supported by 4 alabaster columns carved with
episodes of the Apocryphal and canonical Gospel, between
the fifth and twelfth centuries. Behind the high altar
there is the gold Shovel (m. 1.40x3.48) a masterpiece of
Byzantine and Venetian jewellery, begun in the tenth
century and finished in 1342. An inventory made in 1796
relates that in the shovel are set 1300 pearls, 400
garnets, 300 sapphires, 300 emeralds, 90 amethysts, 75
balas, 15 rubies, 4 topazes, 2 cameos and 80 enamels. To
the sides of the presbytery there are other iconostasis
that precede the Chapel of S. Clemente and S. Pietro. The
Madonna Nicopeia, operator of victory, is revered in the
homonym chapel: it is a Byzantine work of the beginning
of the twelfth century and it belongs to the loot of the
fourth crusade, coming from Constantinople. |
