"Stanze Vaticane - The School of Athens (detail) [01]"

Raphael - Raffaello Sanzio - Oil
The School of Athens or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms 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 there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance." The identities of some of the philosophers in the picture, such as Plato or Aristotle, are incontrovertible. Beyond that, identifications of Raphael's figures, even among scholars, have always been conjectural. To complicate matters, beginning from Vasari's efforts, some have received multiple identifications, not only as ancients but also as figures contemporary with Raphael. In the center of the fresco, at its architecture's central vanishing point, are the two undisputed main subjects: Plato on the left and Aristotle, his student, on the right. Both figures hold modern (of the time), bound copies of their books in their left hands, while gesturing with their right. The building is in the shape of a Greek cross, which some have suggested was intended to show a harmony between pagan philosophy and Christian theology.