Teto dos Semideuses

Around 1490 Cardinal Domenico della Rovere was fitting out a new palace near the Vatican, and he handed the ceiling of one hall to a young painter from Umbria named Pinturicchio. What went up is a grid of 63 octagonal panels, painted in tempera on paper and then fixed to the wood. Instead of saints, they swarm with sphinxes, tritons, satyrs, sirens and centaurs, the hybrid creatures that filled medieval bestiaries and books of monsters. Learned men in the cardinal's circle likely worked the meanings in. At the centre stands the della Rovere family tree, guarded by two peacocks, with more peacocks tucked into the corners. The panels are still up there, in the Palazzo dei Penitenzieri in Rome.