Raphael
The School of Athens
1509–1511
Raphael's 'The School of Athens' (1509–1511), painted as one of the four frescoes of Pope Julius II's private library in the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura, assembles the great philosophers of antiquity beneath a monumental classical vault. Plato and Aristotle walk at the centre — Plato pointing up to the world of ideas, Aristotle gesturing across to the world of matter — surrounded by some fifty figures including Pythagoras, Euclid, Diogenes, Heraclitus (given the features of Michelangelo), and Raphael himself as a bystander. Often called the most perfect visualisation of High Renaissance intellectual harmony, it anchors the Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican Museums.
Exhibition Venue
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