La Sala delle Maschere: un luogo in cui vedersi vedere

This essay reconstructs the intimate meaning of two Greek words, skenographia and skiagraphia, and their literary use in the Ancient World. These two homophonic expressions are characterised by very different meanings. Their history is intertwined in specialised texts on architecture but also in some philosophical works. The comparison between the various meanings that these terms have assumed over time has given rise to a rush of critical hypotheses on their influence in the world of pictorial (now lost) and vascular (partially available) representation, in the Greek and Latin world: here we will try to summarise and compare them, with particular attention to their possible applications in the figurative complex of the Palatine (Rome), known as the Sala delle Maschere. In this environment, the rules of perspectiva artificialis seem to have been precociously understood and applied, in relation to the position of an ideal observer, included in the perimeter of the room.