Palazzo dei Conservatori, coffered ceiling, ceiling plan and details; Sphinx, perspective view (recto) blank (verso) 1500 - 1560

This sheet presents a ceiling plan from the Palazzo dei Conservatori, along with a perspective view of a Sphinx, rendered by an anonymous artist. The drawing gives us an insight into the fascination with antiquity that permeated the Renaissance. Consider the symbolism of the Sphinx. In ancient Egypt, it was a guardian, a figure of power. But here, redrawn through a European lens, what does it guard, and for whom? It may be read as a symbolic appropriation, an act of claiming knowledge and power over another culture's heritage, and how this act is complicated by the ceiling from the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which was a seat of civic power in Rome. There's an emotional resonance in seeing these elements juxtaposed. The artist, whoever they were, was grappling with legacies of power, both ancient and contemporary. How do we grapple with the echoes of colonialism and cultural appropriation that resonate even in architectural drawings like this?