Raphael's School of Athens
Raphael was one of the masters of the High Renaissance. This article explains why his work is considered so emblematic of this period.
The School of Athens represents all the greatest mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists from classical antiquity who gathered together, sharing their ideas and learning from each other. These figures all lived at different times, but here, they
appear to be meeting together under one roof.
Raphael, School of Athens, fresco, 1509-11, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
The two thinkers in the center, Aristotle (on the right) and Plato (on the left, pointing up) have been enormously important to Western thinking. Their different philosophies were incorporated into Christianity in different ways. Plato
holds his book called The Timaeus.
Plato points up because his philosophy claims that the changing world we see around us is simply a shadow of a higher, truer reality that is eternal and unchanging (and includes things like goodness and beauty). For Plato, this otherworldly reality is the ultimate
reality and the seat of all truth, beauty, justice, and wisdom.
Aristotle holds his hand down because he claims the only reality is the reality we can see and experience by sight and touch (exactly the reality Plato dismissed). Aristotle's Ethics (the book he holds) "emphasized the relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the need to study it."
Pythagoras (lower left) believed the world (including the movement of the planets and stars) operated according to mathematical laws. These mathematical laws were related to ideas of musical and cosmic harmony, and thus (for the Christians who interpreted him in the Renaissance) to God. Pythagoras taught that each of the planets produced a note as it moved, based on its distance from the earth. Together, the movement of all the planets was in perfect harmony – "the harmony of the spheres."
Ptolemy (he has his back to us on the lower right) holds a sphere of the earth; Zaroaster, who holds a celestial sphere, is next to him. Ptolemy tried to mathematically explain the movements of the planets, which was not easy since some of them appeared
to move backward. His theory of how they all moved around the earth remained the authority until Copernicus and Kepler discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe during the late 1500s and that the planets moved in orbits the
shape of ellipses, not circles.
Raphael, School of Athens, detail, fresco, 1509-11, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Raphael included a self-portrait of himself, standing next to Ptolemy. He looks right out at us.
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Source: Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, Smarthistory, smarthistory.org
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