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| Raphael The School of Athens 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzo Apostolico, Vatican, Rome |
For nineteenth-century art academies, Raphael represented the classical ideal, the worthiest model to be imitated by students. Leonardo was too mysterious, Michelangelo too extravagant. Raphael was inspirational, despite his early death – on his thirty-eighth birthday – as one who had pulled off a sort of miracle. His compositional skill was prodigious, and particularly apparent in the suite of rooms known as the Stanze, occupied by the Pope. The School of Athens, situated in the chamber of the Segnatura, initially strikes one with its extraordinary architecture, similar to that actually realized by Bramante and Michelangelo, but it is at the same time a mental construct, built to accommodate the totality of philosophic thought since Antiquity, with its continuation into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Plato and Aristotle 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
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| Raphael The School of Athens Plato and Aristotle, with followers 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
Within this superb setting, a comprehensive colloquium is taking place. Many of the participants can be identified by their attributes or attitudes, exactly like the saints in an altarpiece. In the center of the upper register, Plato, the elderly sage who resembles Leonardo da Vinci, with a large volume under his left arm, gestures toward the sky with his right hand. Aristotle, a younger man, points toward the earth as a sign of his encyclopedic knowledge. Each is attended by a group of disciples.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Socrates, with followers 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
To the left of the central group, Socrates instructs another gathering of disciples, reflecting those who are described in the dialogues of Plato. These include a young man in helmet and armour who perhaps represents Alcibiades.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Epicurus 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
In the lower register, at far left, writing in a book supported on the base of a column, is Epicurus, crowned with vine leaves.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Pythagoras 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
Near Epicurus is Pythagoras, also writing in a book, while a youth attempts to show him a slate with notations of musical chords.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Heraclitus 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
Leaning and writing on a fragmentary stone base is Heraclitus, who bears a certain resemblance to Michelangelo.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Parmenides 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
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| Raphael The School of Athens Diogenes 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
At the center of the lower range is Diogenes, lounging on the steps.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Euclid, Hipparchus, Ptolemy 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
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| Raphael The School of Athens Raphael and Il Sodoma 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
The group on the right side of the lower range includes Euclid, bending down to solve a geometric problem on a slate, surrounded both by students and by his disciples Hipparchus (with celestial sphere) and Ptolemy (with terrestrial globe). Just behind them, at the far right edge of the composition, Raphael inserted a self-portrait gazing out at the viewer, accompanied by his colleague (draped in white) Il Sodoma.
Several actual writers of Raphael's day are portrayed among or in the guise of their antique counterparts. And contemporary painters are not relegated to the ranks of artisans, but pointedly included among the philosophers and scholars. The prominence given to Epicurus is balanced by the presence of a group of Stoics, who appear on the right just above the self-portrait of Raphael.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Scholars 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
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| Raphael The School of Athens Averroes 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
Two singular details particularly draw the attention: first, the presence of a savant wearing a turban, thought to represent Averroes. But although he provided an essential link – through his commentaries on Aristotle – between that author and the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, Averroes is here displayed as an admirer of Pythagoras. It is in fact all of medieval Arab science – including mathematics, astrology and alchemy – that this turbaned figure brings to the symposium.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Rushing Youth 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
Also intriguing, on the far left, just above Epicurus, a nude youth with wind-blown drapery rushes onto the stage bearing a book and a roll of documents. His is the only precipitate movement in this entire calm assembly. The haste is clearly urgent. One surmises that he carries a group of lost manuscripts, such as were in fact being recovered when Raphael was painting this very tribute to the Renaissance reclamation and valorization of antiquity.
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| Raphael The School of Athens Statue of Apollo 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
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| Raphael The School of Athens Statue of Athena 1508-1511 fresco Stanza della Segnatura |
This is not the architecture of a temple, even though it makes one think of St Peter's in Rome, but rather that of an immense and sumptuous passageway. It is secularized by a succession of pagan gods in niches, which can only be glimpsed as they recede, like the edges of a book's pages. Two are presented to the viewer along the picture plane: at left, Apollo with his lyre; at right, Athena, with her aegis and lance. On one side, the god who rules choruses and hearts*; and on the other, the goddess who protects them.
The dream is of a rediscovered harmony, yet all the while looms the menace of war.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)
*choruses and hearts stands in for an untranslatable piece of French wordplay: les chœurs et les cœurs – the choruses are those of the ancient theater and the hearts are responding aesthetically rather than erotically; Athena's protection by extension is then bestowed on all of civilization