A colourful close to the Games of new horizons
Raphael included himself as one of the students behind Ptolemy
This is not a physical building, but exists on some higher plane
Ever since The School of Athens
was painted during the Italian High Renaissance in the early 16th century, it has confounded art historians and scholars. Dedicated to the role of philosophical debate, Raphael presents the quest for knowledge as a transformative force in mankind’s evolution.
His father was a prominent court painter to the Duke of Urbino, teaching his boy basic painting techniques from a young age. He also educated his son in the principles of humanist thinking, and the works of the classicists. Raphael was 11 when his father died in 1494, leaving him to manage the art workshop. Even as a teenager, he was considered a far more accomplished painter than his father, and was soon noted as one of the finest artists in Urbino, which was considered to be the epicentre of cultural achievement at the time.
Raphael was quickly chosen for a commission at an important church in the neighbouring province of Perugia. By the age of 21, he had moved to Florence, where he was immediately struck by the magnificent works surrounding him on all sides
– by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Masaccio. They seemed to Raphael to have achieved a higher level of mastery in composition than he had ever seen, and he studied their painting in intimate detail, in order to develop a more intricate, expressive style.
Leonardo’s ability to portray human emotion transfixed him, and he quickly began to introduce tender expressions and sublime colouring into his own work. In the same way, Michelangelo’s ability to make his figures interact would dynamically influence Raphael’s use of light to animate his paintings, giving his forms their dimensionality. Raphael’s superb Madonna of the Pinks can be seen as a clear homage to Leonardo. Indeed, his entire series of Madonnas drew tremendous acclaim, particularly from the leading forces of the Renaissance.
In 1508, he was called to Rome to paint for Pope Julius II in the Vatican, a remarkable triumph for such a young man. Here, Raphael was entrusted with an entire room to create a series of frescoes, which drew on the academic teachings of his father. All the frescoes are spectacular, but his School of Athens was immediately recognised as one of the greatest artistic achievements of all time – despite being surrounded in the Vatican by paintings that had been revered through the centuries.
In fact, there never was such a school; instead, the painting portrays an idealised community of outstanding intellectuals from the ancient classical era. The spacious hall is redolent of the teachings of the Roman poet Lucretius in his treatise On the Nature of Things. The most obvious figures at the centre are Plato and Aristotle, each holding their writings, and discussing the respected merits of idealism versus realism. Plato seems to be pointing upwards, suggesting the power of the cosmos, while Aristotle takes a more grounded view, pointing down to illustrate his belief that ethics need to be practical in nature.
Another venerated thinker, Socrates, is seen in a brown robe, looking towards the left. Pythagoras, the great mathematician, is in pink, along with Euclid, the father of geometry, shown in red robes.
Controversially, Raphael chose to draw the likenesses of his Renaissance heroes on to the Greek figures. Thus Plato has the face of Leonardo da Vinci and, seated at the front, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus has been painted in the likeness of Michelangelo. Donatello’s face is placed on the body of Plotinus, standing towards the back of the picture. Raphael included himself as one of the students standing behind Ptolemy on the right, and is the only figure staring straight back at the viewer. This amalgamation of artists with philosophers synthesises the ancient and contemporary melding that characterises the pinnacle of the Italian Renaissance.
Not all is certain about these readings, and scholars have puzzled over them for many decades. Ptolemy, the renowned astronomer, is generally agreed to be the figure holding a globe of the Earth, and behind him is his counterpart, the Persian Zoroaster, with a sphere to illustrate the fixed stars. But is it Archimedes who is demonstrating his theories using compasses, rather than Euclid?
As a spectator, viewing the work, you are invited to step into this world, to walk among the greats. However, the sky and the incompleteness of the architecture reflect that The School of Athens is not a physical building, but instead exists on some higher plane.
Perhaps most admired is Raphael’s flawless brushwork, and the technical refinement of his paintings. Nonetheless,
The School of Athens proved less influential in Italy than the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo. It was accepted, however, that with the death of Raphael, the high point of Renaissance art was past, as tastes moved onward towards mannerism and the baroque.
Alfonso d’este, Duke of Ferrara, had lofty ambitions to possess a powerful collection of the finest work by the greatest artists in Italy, and commissioned Raphael and his esteemed compatriot Fra Bartolomeo to make masterworks for him. Sadly, both died before their pieces were fully executed. Raphael was just 37, and had only completed the preparatory layout of his painting. It was left to Titian to complete the work, and his supreme Bacchus and Ariadne was the result – a masterpiece created, therefore, by two of the most gifted artists that the world has produced.
Raphael is best remembered by the illustrious Joshua Reynolds: “The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, the judicious contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste. Nobody excelled him in that judgment, and to the question, therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raphael or Michelangelo, it must be answered, that if it is to be given to him who possessed a greater combination of the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raphael is the first.”