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