School of Athens - Beatriz de la Torre

The School Of Athens is a fresco painted between 1510 and 1511, by Raphael. It is currently in the Vatican, Stanza della Segnatura, Rome.

The story behind this painting is that in 1510, Julius II heard of the abilities of Raphael, he ordered him to destroy the paintings on the walls of his council chambers in the Vatican palace, to plaster over the old frescoes (painted previously by Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino and Sodoma) and to cover the walls of the rooms known as the Stanze of Raphael with his own style and choice.

At the same time, Michaelangelo was painting over the Sistine Chapel ceiling his own version of the Christian world and Raphael was meanwhile painting his vision of the Humanist world.

It was named "school" not as an academy, but as an ideal community of intellects from the classical world.

In the picture above, we can see how Raphael was trying to idealize portraits of his contemporaries to represent the main figures and characters of classical wisdom and science; in this case: Plato and Aristotle. Also, if you zoom in the picture, you can see details that I personally found interesting because it's not something many people would notice at first, such as Plato holding his book Timaeus and with his right hand, pointing upwards, supposedly indicating that world ideas, like BEAUTY, GOODNESS and TRUTH are not in or from this world of space, time and matter but are "unreachable", lying beyond in a timeless and spaceless "world" of pure ideas.

Aristotle points with his right hand straight into the solid world of material reality, physical science and reason. He is also holding his own book, Ethics. This particular scene of the School of Athens shows the discussion of Idealism vs. Realism.

Elsewhere, there is also Heraclitus, who was on Plato's side and is also a Pre-Socratic philosopher whose system didn't fit into anybody else's: "The way up and the way down are one and the same" and "No man can step into the same stream twice".

After some technical analysis, it is now known that Heraclitus was painted later as and afterthought, on an area that is somehow away of the other scenes. I also found a very interesting explanation of Rapahel's last-minute addition and I thought it was better to copy-paste it for better comprehension:

"Heraclitus looks a lot like Michelangelo, who was at this time slaving away next door on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It is said that despite Michelangelo's efforts to keep his work in total secrecy, Raphael managed to sneak into the Chapel to see what his anti-social older rival was up to. And sure enough, not only does the Heraclitus figure look like Michelangelo; in its block-like sculptural solidity, it looks like it was painted by Michelangelo."


What I found really amazing and interesting was, first of all, the meaning and the stories behind each scene of the painting. Because I only read about one or two stories but I'm sure there are a lot more of these surprising stories. I also liked the details and the concept of the human that was then much more detailed and the measures were more similar to the real ones. The depth of the painting, of the arches, is really notorious; you can see how the curved lines and the colors and shadows make the painting look like it's very deep, which is something that was beggining to be used in that time.


SOURCES:

*The Artchive. "Raphael. School of Athens". nd. Web. Consulted 27 sep 2010.
*Bev, Jennie S. "Raffaello Sanzio 'The School of Athens'". July 5th, 2010. Web. Consulted 27 sep 2010.
*Socrated, Silenos. Ancient Worlds. "The School of Athens". May 1st, 2005. Web. Consulted 27 sep 2010.
*Ancient Philosophy. "The School of Athens". nd. Web. Consulted 27 sep 2010.