Four armoured emperors embrace in pairs, each with a hand on his sword hilt, their faces almost identical. They stand for the Tetrarchy, Diocletian's shared rule by two senior and two junior emperors, rather than for individuals. Carved in purple porphyry from Egypt, a stone reserved for emperors, they were looted from Constantinople in 1204 and set into a corner of St Mark's.
Look closer
One emperor is missing part of his foot. The heel was found in Istanbul in the 1960s and is now in the city's Archaeology Museum.
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Compared by a vision model
