Many figures all except Socrates? There is also, although not perfect or proportional, some temporal ordering of the persons from the center. Study on the " School of Athens ". Plato's Academy or should it be better called Plato's park of olive trees?
Was Plato's Academy founded earlier by Democritus? Cicero gives a part of the following list as heads of "Plato's Academy":. Damascius AD last head after the Byzantine Emperor orders the closing of the "pagan" Academy Christian religion is the only religion allowed. Plato - BC holds a copy of his Timaeus , and gestures upward to the aetherial realm of his eternal forms.
This Plato is probably a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. He holds a copy of his Nichomachean Ethics -- and he indicates with his gesture the worldliness, the concreteness, of his contributions to philosophy.
Nicomachus was the father of Aristotle but also his son was called Nicomachus the mother some say was Herpyllis a concubine of Aristotle which he married after the death of his wife Pythias.
Does his brown and blue colored clothes represent the two elements water and earth probably to show that his philosophy is grounded, material , whereas Plato's two colors represent fire and air? And I," said he, "am Diogenes the dog. His father Icesias was a banker. Diogenes is seen alone, set apart: [ What is he reading? Diogenes, a philosopher, lived in a big barrel, instead of the traditional house.
He spent his nights wandering from house to house with a lantern, knocking on peoples' doors to find out if there was "an honest human inside. When Alexander the Great went to meet him, he found him sitting in front of his barrel, facing the sun. As a great admirer of Diogenes, Alexander then asked him if there is anything he could give him, which today might be equivalent to being asked whether you would like to win the lottery. Diogenes thought for a while, and then asked politely if the Great King could simply This answer so impressed Alexander, that he exclaimed that if he were not Alexander, he would have liked to be Diogenes!
Some have consider this figure to represent Socrates and his cup the hemlock cup, but Socrates prefered not to be isolated and was involved in discussions. A recent study has shown that among various Greeks the Cretans spent most of their time talking, although the number given of 8 hours per day is maybe not realistic, the Peloponnesians are less interested, keeping their Spartan Laconic tradition.
Plotinus , the founder of Neo-Platonism. Was he and his work known around in Italy? Probably yes from a Latin translation of his work by Marsilio Ficino published in He influenced many modern Philosopher's even sometimes unacknowledged. He is described by Porphyry as otherworldly which maybe is the reason that he is shown isolated although some of the person's he knew appointed him as the guardian to their children.
Zoroaster c. This figure is said to be modeled on Michelangelo Buonarroti who was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at exactly the same time Raphael was painting the School of Athens.
However, in the original cartoon, or preparatory work, Raphael had not planned to put this figure in. However, Raphael was so impressed that he sketched in this figure of Heraclitus with red chalk after the School of Athens was officially completed and very quickly added this figure as a tribute to Michelangelo.
Today when you see this figure it is quite noticeable that it is out of place. If you would like to compare it to the original plans, the cartoon for the School of Athens can be seen in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan today. It is also worth noting that though Michelangelo and Raphael worked in the Vatican at the same time they did not get along very well.
Sadly during the Sack of Rome in , the troops of Charles V damaged quite a bit of the School of Athens and on a quiet day in the Vatican Museums, if you get a chance to look closely at the fresco you can still today see stabbed mark graffiti on the fresco painting.
To see the School of Athens painting today you must enter into the Vatican Museums by taking a tour, standing in line or pre-booking your skip the line tickets. The museums are a one-way system so you will have to go to the Raphael Rooms to exit the museums. Although the School of Athens was completed when Raphael was only 28, Raphael had only nine more years to live. In strong contrast in front of him is Xenocrates others say Parmenides.
In the foreground, head resting on his arm, the mournful Heracleitus with the features of Michelangelo. The absence of this figure in the original cartoon now in Milan's Ambrosian Library and its obvious Michelangelo style it is modelled on the Sybils and Ignudi of the Sistine ceiling , leads us to believe that Raphael added this figure in when, after completing the room, he saw the first half of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling frescoes.
In tribute to his great rival, Raphael portrayed Michelangelo in the guise of the philosopher from Ephesus. The child at the side of Epicurus, clearly indifferent to the speculations of the thinkers, seems to be Federico Gonzaga , later Federico II of Mantua of the famous Gonzaga family of Renaissance patrons and collectors.
Further to the right, calmly reclining on the stairs, is Diogenes, the oject of the remonstrations by the disciples of the Academy. In the foreground, to the right of Aristotle, Raphael placed the High Renaissance architect Donato Bramante in the person of Euclid, who is pictured bending over a table and demonstrating a theorem with the aid of a compass.
Bramante, the architectural adviser to Julius II, and a distant relative of Raphael's from Urbino, was responsible for Raphael's summons to Rome, and the younger man reciprocates by signing his name in the gold border of Bramante's tunic. Over to the right, identified by the crown he wears, is the geographer Ptolemy, holding the globe of the earth.
Facing him is the atronomer Zoroaster, holding the globe of the sky. How could any observer of his prospective painting be expected to distinguish one philosopher from another? But Antisthenes from Xenophon? Diogenes from Socrates? Thinkers may think different thoughts, but their robes look remarkably the same. At first glance, Raphael has depicted Plato in a straightforward way, walking down steps next to Aristotle Credit: Alamy.
As Raphael began to assemble his heady cast of anachronistic characters, the monumental muddle that might result must have seemed more and more pronounced. Sure, it might at first seem simple enough to tell the elder Plato from his student Aristotle, as the pair sashay in their scholarly way down the steps at the centre of the painting. But forcing observers of the work to squint at the spine of hefty tomes shoved cumbersomely into the hands of each and every figure in the painting would have weighed the work down with tediously tweedy detail.
At some point in assembling his School, Raphael appears to have realised that establishing static and easily distinguishable identities for his celebrated students was the wrong approach. He should instead embrace the inevitable confusion, overtly invite a sense of irresolvable flux, and thereby make the indeterminacy of identity itself the very philosophy of his portrait of philosophy. Instead, he embodies an intense compression of shifting personalities. Many of the figures Raphael painted in the School of Athens could represent two different characters — was this ambiguity deliberate?
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