The original drawing by Titian for the subject of this fresco is to be found among those publicly exhibited at the École des Beaux Arts of Paris. It is in error given by Morelli as in the Malcolm Collection, and curiously enough M. Georges Lafenestre repeats this error in his Vie et Oeuvre du Titien. The drawing differs so essentially from the fresco that it can only be considered as a discarded design for it. It is in the style which Domenico Campagnola, in his Giorgionesque-Titianesque phase, so assiduously imitates.
One of the many inaccuracies of Vasari in his biography of Titian is to speak of the St. Mark as "una piccola tavoletta, un S. Marco a sedere in mezzo a certi santi."
In connection with this group of works, all of them belonging to the quite early years of the sixteenth century, there should also be mentioned an extraordinarily interesting and as yet little known Herodias with the head of St. John the Baptist by Sebastiano Luciani, bearing the date 1510. This has recently passed into the rich collection of Mr. George Salting. It shows the painter admirably in his purely Giorgionesque phase, the authentic date bearing witness that it was painted during the lifetime of the Castelfranco master. It groups therefore with the great altar-piece by Sebastiano at S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, with Sir Francis Cook's injured but still lovely Venetian Lady as the Magdalen (the same ruddy blond model), and with the four Giorgionesque Saints in the Church of S. Bartolommeo al Rialto.
Die Galerien zu München und Dresden, p. 74.