Walking around Florence in the summer of 2018, I couldn’t take my eyes off the lions. Lions everywhere: statues, frescoes, downspouts, and holding knockers on doors throughout the city. I was especially drawn to these door guardians – how specific each one was, how different the personality of each individual, how unlike more recent artifacts of mass production. I set about drawing portraits of these lions, my way of honoring the lions themselves as well as the creativity of the unnamed craftsmen who fabricated them.