The famous fresco “The School of Athens” by Raphael is one of the best-known masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. It’s one of the most iconic works of the period and marks a clear passage from medieval to Renaissance art. You’ll find it in the Vatican Museums, in Rome, in the room we now call the Stanza della Segnatura.
Yes, because while during the Middle Ages religion was always at the centre of the scenes depicted, during the Renaissance the foundations were laid for an art more focused on secular man. Raphael’s School of Athens is one of the greatest examples of this shift. The work symbolises the rediscovery of the classical Greek and Latin texts, as if to draw a comparison between the intellectuals of the day and those of the past.
But The School of Athens also hides a great many curiosities!
Yes, because in creating this work, Raphael wasn’t content with using anonymous models: he used the features of some of the most famous figures of his time and cast them in a “philosophical” key, according to each one’s leanings.
But what does that mean?
Let me give you an example!
Look at the figure of Euclid: he’s shown with the features of Raphael’s great friend Bramante, busy tracing a geometric drawing on the ground. At the centre, instead, Leonardo da Vinci plays the role of Plato and, lower down, a little isolated on the left, in the guise of Heraclitus, we find Michelangelo Buonarroti.
This last figure is shown in a rather sullen pose, resting his head on his hand, completely detached from everything around him.
Want to know why?
Then all you have to do is read on and discover every curiosity about Raphael’s School of Athens.
Let’s go!
The School of Athens: a short explanation of the work
Before venturing into the curiosities of this wonderful work, I’d like to offer you a short analysis of the fresco. As I said at the start, the main theme of The School of Athens is human knowledge, represented in the guise of the most important classical figures.
But why this theme?
The commission came to Raphael from Pope Julius II himself, who quite simply wanted to redecorate his private apartments (the four rooms now known as the Raphael Rooms). The fresco was painted between 1509 and 1511, right in the Stanza della Segnatura, which housed the pope’s personal library. The underlying idea was, of course, the exaltation of the papacy and of the culture of the Catholic Church as heir to Latin and Greek civilisation.
That’s why Raphael created four great frescoes for the pontiff, representing the four spheres of knowledge according to humanist culture: Theology, Philosophy, Poetry and Jurisprudence.
In the fresco “The School of Athens”, Raphael therefore celebrates human knowledge at its highest. The whole scene seems centred on a great discussion, and every figure is portrayed according to their philosophical thought.
If you look closely, the work is a true materialisation, in flesh and blood, of the ideas that most shaped human history in the classical age. To name only the most important: at the centre you can spot Plato and Aristotle, one pointing to the world of ideas, the other to empirical reality. To their left is Socrates, in a green tunic, deep in conversation with a few listeners. Then there’s Pythagoras, writing in a book, Euclid giving a demonstration with a compass and, sprawled on the steps with his bowl, the provocative Diogenes.
In all there are 58 figures, and of course the work was aimed at a cultured audience, one that could readily identify the subjects portrayed.
But not everything is mere representation.
The space in which The School of Athens is set is extremely real. It really seems to be inside a true temple, so much so that it may be inspired by some of Bramante’s designs for the new Saint Peter’s Basilica.
The geometric perspective is perfect and framed, on both sides, by the statues of Apollo and Minerva. Of course, light and colour too are used masterfully by Raphael and help give a great sense of harmony, despite the heated debate depicted.
Read on to discover every curiosity about The School of Athens…
The School of Athens: Michelangelo painted as Heraclitus
As I was saying, “The School of Athens” also hides important curiosities, and some scholars have even seen an open criticism of Michelangelo by Raphael, who used him as the “model” for the figure of Heraclitus.
Heraclitus had in fact been described since antiquity as an “obscure” philosopher with rather cryptic thought. His is the doctrine of opposites, the clash between opposing essences of being and feelings that nonetheless need to coexist: traits that suit Michelangelo’s solitary, enigmatic spirit well.
But beyond the “philosophical” aspect, Raphael highlights other details too!
We know that Buonarroti, in that very period, was painting the wonderful fresco of the Sistine Chapel. And you should know that, although he was very rich thanks to the commissions he’d received, he lived very poorly. It’s said he never took his boots off, not even to sleep, and only slipped them off when he had to swap them for a new pair. In short, he wore them so long that the skin of his foot came away with the leather.
Doesn’t it seem to you that this trait is especially emphasised?
If you look carefully, across the whole fresco of The School of Athens, the only figure whose (worn-out) boots are so clearly on show is precisely Heraclitus / Michelangelo. In the foreground, Raphael therefore painted his antagonist’s very boots, as if to underline the stench they gave off. What’s more, the way this figure’s anatomy is defined and painted recalls Michelangelo’s own painting.
So Raphael imitated his rival’s manner of painting and, while “honouring” him by depicting him in this hugely important work, he also somehow mocked him for his overly austere lifestyle and his withdrawal from social life.
And there’s a detail that makes it all even more fascinating: the figure of Heraclitus wasn’t in the original design. The great preparatory cartoon kept at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan doesn’t include it at all. Raphael added it only after seeing (secretly, according to Vasari) the vault of the Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo was working on: he was struck by it and wanted to add a tribute to his rival, painted in Michelangelo’s own powerful, sculptural style. Homage and challenge, all in a single figure.
But it doesn’t end here, because the work hides many other famous figures.
Leonardo da Vinci depicted as Plato
Exactly at the centre of the scene, right beneath the arch, stand the two figures considered the greatest exponents of Greek philosophy: Plato and Aristotle. If you look closely, the figure of Plato looks very much like one of Leonardo da Vinci’s self-portraits: he holds the Timaeus in his hand and points his finger to the sky.
In a single gesture, Raphael managed to condense the idea of Plato / Leonardo, for whom philosophy is based on the world of transcendent ideas, the famous Hyperuranion, but also on the search for the Good.
To his left, in sharp contrast, stands Aristotle, with the face of the lesser-known Bastiano da Sangallo (nicknamed, fittingly enough, “Aristotile”). He holds the Nicomachean Ethics and stretches his arm downwards, palm turned to the ground, precisely to indicate that his research focused instead on the real world.
It’s truly astonishing how, in “The School of Athens”, Raphael managed to condense two such complex, opposing philosophies into two seemingly ordinary gestures.
Bramante depicted as Euclid, and Raphael’s self-portrait
On the right-hand side of “The School of Athens” you can spot a small group of people gathered around a figure tracing a circle with a compass. This is Euclid (or Archimedes) demonstrating a theorem based precisely on geometric figures.
Here too the mathematician’s face is borrowed from a famous figure of the time: Bramante.
Right behind him, a little apart from the group of pupils, is Raphael’s self-portrait and that of his friend and colleague Sodoma, who worked on the ceiling painting, or perhaps of Perugino, Raphael’s master.
The only woman in The School of Athens
In a world almost entirely dominated by men, Raphael perhaps had the boldness to depict a woman too.
She’s a figure wrapped in a white robe, thought to represent the philosopher Hypatia. Besides being one of the four figures to turn her gaze towards the viewer, this figure is at the centre of a heated debate.
Yes, because no text identifies her with certainty in these robes, and some historians believe the face is that of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino and nephew of Pope Julius II.
In short, to this day the mystery remains unsolved.
Where to see The School of Athens
As I told you at the start, the fresco is in the Raphael Rooms, inside the Vatican Museums in Rome. It’s the same visit that takes you to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: so with a single ticket you get to admire the masterpieces of the two eternal rivals, just steps apart.
A practical tip: the Vatican Museums are among the most visited in the world, and the queues at the entrance can be extremely long. It’s really worth booking a guided tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel in advance: you skip the wait, and a guide helps you spot all the hidden faces I’ve told you about.
And you, how many of these figures had you managed to recognise?
