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Raphael's "School of Athens"

Meaning Behind the Painting

A Brief Overview

Ptolemy and Zoroaster

  • One of Raphael's most well known frescoes
  • Painted between 1509-1511 in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City
  • Raphael was commissioned to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael Rooms)
  • It was the second of four frescoes to be painted in the Raphael Rooms
  • Ptolemy (back turned), an Egyptian astronomer, is seen holding a sphere of the earth and talking to Zoroaster (left), an Iranian prophet, who is holding a celestial sphere
  • It is depicted that Ptolemy is trying to explain to Zoroaster the movement of planets, saying that all the planets revolved around earth (which isn't true)
  • Raphael included a self-portrait of himself in his fresco, who is looking out at us

Plato and Aristotle

  • Each of the four frescoes represented branches of knowledge
  • School of Athens was dedicated to philosophy being connected to knowledge
  • The fresco included various mathematicians, philosophers and scientists from different time periods sharing their ideas and learning from each other
  • Some main figures included in the fresco included Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras
  • Plato (left) is seen holding his book Timaeus and pointing up into the sky
  • This is because his philosophy states that the changing world we see is a shadow of a higher, truer reality that is eternal and unchanging (Heaven)
  • Aristotle (right) is seen with his own book Ethics and holding his hand down
  • This is because in his philosophy, the only reality is the one that we can experience and see by sight and touch

Pythagoras

  • Being a mathematician, he believed that the world, the movement of the planets and stars operated according to mathematical laws
  • These laws were related to ideas of musical and cosmic harmony, and thus to God
  • He taught us that each of the planets played a different note depending on the distance from earth
  • Thus, the movement of the planets created the "harmony of the spheres"

How it Connects to Elements of the Renaissance

  • There were many elements of this fresco that make it a great work of art during the Renaissance era:
  • Raphael painted the School of Athens as a three-dimensional background and had humans as the main focus
  • There was plenty of detail, especially the faces and bodies of each human to create a realistic atmosphere
  • He incorporated linear perspective by having the walls of the "school" lead to one vanishing point
  • Nonetheless, Raphael's School of Athens is considered his masterpiece and an excellent example of High Renaissance art
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