There is perhaps no building as rich as San Marco in sculptures of such diverse nature, era and provenance. The figurative sculpture of the French cathedrals of the 12th and 13th centuries is certainly even richer, but for the most part these are works created in the place for which they were conceived and intended or which survived from a pre-existing building.

In San Marco this case occurs only for a significant part of the sculptures. The rest was collected elsewhere, then placed inside or outside the church and forced to blend into a whole that constitutes a curious mixture of trophies, ornamental elements already endowed with meaning, subsequently integrated with new mosaics and sculptures in a decorative symbiosis that is very fascinating from a programmatic point of view.
The result is a picturesque unitary complex, although naturally it is more of a unity that can be perceived with the senses and the imagination than a logical and structural unity.