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The School of Athens

Raphael, 1509-1510

Fresco, 500 × 770 cm

Vatican City, Apostolic Palace

The School of Athens is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1510 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished after La disputa.

Because it was positioned over the philosophical section of the library of Pope Julius II, The School of Athens shows the greatest philosophers, scientists and mathematicians of classical antiquity. Plato and Aristotle, the Greek philosophers that were considered most important, are standing in the center of the composition at the top of the steps. Plato is holding his Timaeus. Aristotle is carrying a copy of his Nichomachean Ethics. Their gestures correspond to their interests in the philosophical field - Plato is pointing upwards towards Heaven and Aristotle is gesturing towards the earth.

Diogenes is lying carefree on the steps before them to show his philosophical attitude: he despised all material wealth and the lifestyle associated with it. To the left, is a great block of stone the significance of which is sometimes connected with the first epistle of St Peter; it symbolizes Christ, the "cornerstone" which the builders have rejected and which becomes a stumbling block and a "rock of offence" to the unbeliever. The man leaning on the block is Heraclites, meant to be Michelangelo. This figure was an afterthought: it was not in the original cartoon. In 1510, Raphael snuck into the Sistine Chapel to view Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling by candle light. He was so awed by the unfinished work that he added Michelangelo in his own style of painting to show his respect for the artist.

Raphael's self portrait is at the far lower-right of the fresco, the young man with brown hair staring straight out at the audience. On the left of the painting a girl-like figure, dressed in white, is also staring out at the audience. Romantic legend has it that she is Raphael's love, Margherita. Other interpretations, however, claim that it is Hypatia of Alexandria, or a portrait of the young Francesco Maria I della Rovere.

The identity of some of the philosophers in the picture, such as Plato or Aristotle, is uncontroversial, but scholars disagree on many of the other figures. They are usually identified as follows:^[1]

1: Zeno of Citium or Zeno of Elea? – 2: Epicurus – 3: Frederik II of Mantua? – 4: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius or Anaximander or Empedocles? – 5: Averroes – 6: Pythagoras – 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great? – 8: Antisthenes or Xenophon? – 9: Hypatia or the young Francesco Maria della Rovere? – 10: Aeschines or Xenophon? – 11: Parmenides? – 12: Socrates – 13: Heraclitus (painted as Michelangelo) – 14: Plato holding the Timaeus (painted as Leonardo da Vinci) – 15: Aristotle holding the Ethics – 16: Diogenes of Sinope – 17: Plotinus? – 18: Euclid or Archimedes with students (painted as Bramante)? – 19: Strabo or Zoroaster? – 20: Ptolemy – R: Raphael as Apelles – 21: Il Sodoma as Protogenes

A reproduction of the fresco can be seen in the auditorium of Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia. Produced in 1900 by George W. Breck to replace an older reproduction that was destroyed in a fire in 1895, it is four inches off scale from the original, because the Vatican would not allow identical reproductions of its art works. ^[2]

Another reproduction, by Neide, is in the Königsberg Cathedral, Kaliningrad.^{[citation needed]}

More recently the image was used by Hard Rock band Guns n' Roses for their 1991 albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Extracts of the image, chiefly the two figures to the left of Plotinus (figure 17), were extracted by New York artist Mark Kostabi for the cover art.

Another reproduction can be found in the University of North Carolina--Asheville's Highsmith University Student Union.

A reproduction of this painting can also be found at Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity's National Headquarters, the Levere Memorial Temple, in the Panhellenic Room located in Evanston, IL.

1. ^ The School of Athens, "Who is Who?" by Michael Lahanas
2. ^ Information on Old Cabell Hall from University of Virginia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

The School of Athens

• The School of Athens at the Web Gallery of Art
• The School of Athens. Interactive Map.
• The School of Athens. Interactive Map.
• The School of Athens - original cartoon at the Ambrosiana Gallery, Milan

	Zeno of Citium or Zeno of Elea	Epicurus	Averroes and Pythagoras
Pythagoras	Alcibiades or Alexander the Great and Antisthenes or Xenophon	Francesco Maria I della Rovere or Hypatia of Alexandria and Parmenides	Parmenides
Aeschines and Socrates	Michelangelo as Heraclitus	Leonardo da Vinci as Plato	Aristotle
Diogenes	Bramante as Euclid or Archimedes	Strabo or Zoroaster, Ptolemy, Raphael as Apelles and Il Sodoma as Protogenes