Back in 2006 I went to Rome, visited the tombs of Keats and Shelley, sat on the Spanish Steps, had my camera stolen on the subway (holidays are often mixed affairs, after all), discovered a penchant for liquorice liqueur, marvelled at the Coliseum, got a sore neck looking up at St Mark’s Cathedral and the glorious Sistine Chapel…and spent some time in contemplation of the famous fresco that is the subject of today’s blog. The School of Athens is one of four wall frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, the apartment in the Vatican palace whose walls and ceiling were painted by Raphael between 1508 and 1511.

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) was commissioned by Pope Julius II, the same man who also commissioned Michelangelo to paint the nearby Sistine Chapel (this Pope clearly knew his painters), and, like that work, the Stanza della Segnatura is an embodiment of all that was great about the classical spirit of the Renaissance. It’s hard to think of a better symbol for the marriage of art, philosophy, and science that was the hallmark of the Italian Renaissance than The School of Athens.

The frescoes depict the themes of philosophy, theology, literature and justice, and personifications of the same four themes decorate the ceiling. The School of Athens, representing philosophy, is notable for its accurate perspectival projection, which Raphael learned from Leonardo da Vinci (whose likeness Raphael used for the central figure of this painting, Plato). The two central figures are Plato and Aristotle, each holding a copy of one of their books (Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics), and around them is an assortment of figures from the worlds of philosophy and the natural sciences, including Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid and Ptolemy. If you’re ever in Rome, be sure to visit the Stanza della Segnatura, but do look after your camera!