Rome from the Ponte Rotto 

Editor: This is Ferdinand Becker's "Rome from the Ponte Rotto." It looks like a watercolor, and the scene feels almost ghostly, with all the ruins. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Beyond the ruins, I see a commentary on power and its impermanence. Becker presents Rome not as a triumphant empire, but as a landscape scarred by history. The figures in the foreground—are they observers, or are they implicated in this decline? Editor: That's interesting. I hadn't thought about the figures that way. Curator: Think about who gets to witness and narrate these histories. Is it the colonizer or the colonized? This piece prompts us to question whose Rome we are really seeing. Editor: Wow, I never thought of it like that. It really changes my perspective on the whole drawing. Curator: Exactly! Art invites us to deconstruct narratives and imagine alternative perspectives.