A Look at Raphael's School of Athens

A Look at Raphael’s School of Athens

While Michelangelo was busy on his back painting his now famous ceiling, Raphael was right next door painting a fresco that paid tribute not to the modern religion of the time, but to ancient philosophy and the founding fathers of written philosophy, Plato and Aristotle. Pope Julius II wanted his library to be painted and when twenty-seven-year-old Raphael was recommended to Julius, he asked the young artist to paint the four branches of knowledge on the walls on his to-be library. Although Raphael had minimal experience in large fresco painting, there was an outstanding example in the form of the Sistine Chapel (Figure 1) where Michelangelo was revolutionizing this particular type of medium (“School of Athens”). Just as the Pope asked of him, Raphael painted the four branches of knowledge: Religion (Figure 2), Philosophy (Figure 3), Poetry (Figure 4), and Law (Figure 5). Philosophy, or School of Athens, shows many prominent philosophers having great discussions about life, knowledge, and math. Although all four of these frescos deserve the title masterpiece, his School of Athens is one of his most outstanding works and is a perfect example of the High Renaissance style of art.

Raphael’s School of Athens summarizes the Renaissance by its sensible placement of figures and the amount of empty space that counters of commotion of the scene, as well as the general content of the painting. As the Renaissance was a revival of cultural and intellectual development, it is fitting for Raphael to look back to the people who encouraged cultural and intellectual development. Although there is no way to know for sure, according to Daniel Bell, it is “suggested that nearly every Greek philosopher and ancient scientist can be found [in the painting]” (Bell 638). Because there was no “artistic convention” for depicting such people, Raphael had to devise his own way of representing the figures (Bell 638). Raphael combined his imagination with portraits of his colleagues; Plato’s face seems to be a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo is shown in the lower left sketching. Raphael painted himself as a listener in the lower right nearly completed blocked by other people (Stokstad). This is representative of Renaissance because instead of just painting religious figures, the painting content of this time expanded to individual people being painted with the emergence of portraits. By Raphael using his imagination and fellow painters as inspiration for the figures he portrayed, he is taking advantage a new age where it is encouraged to paint something new.

Not every figure in this work is worth trying to guess who is being portrayed, but it seems that there are some philosophers that Raphael clearly wanted the viewer to recognize. Plato and Aristotle, right in the center, are very easy to identify as they are both holding their own works, Timaeus