<P> The revived Mannerist sphinx of the late 15th century is sometimes thought of as the "French sphinx". Her coiffed head is erect and she has the breasts of a young woman . Often she wears ear drops and pearls as ornaments . Her body is naturalistically rendered as a recumbent lioness . Such sphinxes were revived when the grottesche or "grotesque" decorations of the unearthed Domus Aurea of Nero were brought to light in late 15th - century Rome, and she was incorporated into the classical vocabulary of arabesque designs that spread throughout Europe in engravings during the 16th and 17th centuries . Sphinxes were included in the decoration of the loggia of the Vatican Palace by the workshop of Raphael (1515--20), which updated the vocabulary of the Roman grottesche . </P> <P> The first appearances of sphinxes in French art are in the School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s and 1530s and she continues into the Late Baroque style of the French Régence (1715--1723). From France, she spread throughout Europe, becoming a regular feature of the outdoors decorative sculpture of 18th - century palace gardens, as in the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, La Granja in Spain, Branicki Palace in Białystok, or the late Rococo examples in the grounds of the Portuguese Queluz National Palace (of perhaps the 1760s), with ruffs and clothed chests ending with a little cape . </P> <P> Sphinxes are a feature of the neoclassical interior decorations of Robert Adam and his followers, returning closer to the undressed style of the grottesche . They had an equal appeal to artists and designers of the Romanticism and subsequent Symbolism movements in the 19th century . Most of these sphinxes alluded to the Greek sphinx and the myth of Oedipus, rather than the Egyptian, although they may not have wings . </P> <P> The sphinx image also has been adopted into Masonic architecture . Among the Egyptians, sphinxes were placed at the entrance of the temple to guard the mysteries, by warning those who penetrated within that they should conceal a knowledge of them from the uninitiated . Champollion says that the sphinx became successively the symbol of each of the gods . The placement of the sphinx expresses the idea that all the gods were hidden from the people, and that the knowledge of them, guarded in the sanctuaries, was revealed to the initiates only . As a Masonic emblem, the sphinx has been adopted in its Egyptian character as a symbol of mystery, and as such often is found as a decoration sculptured in front of Masonic temples, or engraved at the head of Masonic documents . It cannot, however, be properly called an ancient, recognized symbol of the order . Its introduction has been of comparatively recent date, and rather as a symbolic decoration than as a symbol of any particular dogma . </P>

A statue with a lion body and a woman head in egypt