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High Renaissance 643

and Athena, patron deities of the arts and of wisdom, oversee the interactions. Plato and Aristotle are the central !gures around whom Raphael carefully arranged the others. Plato holds his book Timaeus and points to Heaven, the source of his philosophical inspiration, while Aristotle carries his book Nichomachean Ethics and gestures toward the earth, from which his observations of real- ity sprang. Appropriately, ancient philosophers, men concerned with the ultimate mysteries that transcend this world, stand on Pla- to’s side. On Aristotle’s side are the philosophers and scientists con- cerned with practical matters, such as mathematics. At the lower le", Pythagoras writes as a servant holds up the harmonic scale. In the foreground, Heraclitus (probably a portrait of Michelangelo) broods alone. Diogenes sprawls on the steps. At the right, students surround Euclid, who demonstrates a theorem. Euclid may be a portrait of the architect Bramante, whom Julius II had recently commissioned to design the new church (#$%&. 22-22 and 22-23) to replace Constantine’s 1,200-year-old Saint Peter’s (#$%. 8-9). (School of Athens probably re'ects Bramante’s 1505 design for the interior of Saint Peter’s; compare #$%. 24-5. According to Vasari, Bramante advised Raphael about the architectural setting.) At the extreme right, just to the right of the astronomers Zoroaster and Ptolemy,

both holding globes, is a young man wearing a black hat—Raphael’s self-portrait.

(e groups appear to move easily and clearly, with eloquent poses and gestures that symbolize their doctrines and present an engaging variety of !gural positions. (e self-assurance and natu- ral dignity of the !gures convey calm reason, balance, and mea- sure—the qualities that Renaissance thinkers admired as the heart of philosophy. Signi!cantly, Raphael placed himself among the mathematicians and scientists in School of Athens. Certainly the evolution of pictorial science approached perfection in this fresco in which Raphael convincingly depicted a vast space on a two- dimensional surface.

School of Athens also reveals Raphael’s matured psychological insight. As in Leonardo’s Last Supper (#$%. 22-4), all the charac- ters communicate moods that re'ect their beliefs, and the artist’s placement of each !gure tied these moods together. From the cen- ter, where Plato and Aristotle stand, Raphael arranged the groups of !gures in an ellipse with a wide opening in the foreground. Moving along the 'oor’s perspective pattern, the viewer’s eye pen- etrates the assembly of philosophers and continues, by way of the reclining Diogenes, up to the here-reconciled leaders of the two

22-9 R!"#!$%, Philosophy (School of Athens), Stanza della Segnatura, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1509–1511. Fresco, 199 & 279.

Raphael included himself in this gathering of great philosophers and scientists whose self-assurance conveys calm reason. The setting recalls the massive vaults of the ancient Basilica Nova (FIG. 7-74).

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