Raphael's The School of Athens brings ancient thinkers together within an idealized architectural setting. Plato and Aristotle at the center provide its principal visual focus.
The work is part of the frescoes in the Vatican Rooms. Its arrangement expresses Renaissance ideas about classical knowledge and order in art.
Program, subject, figure identifications and interpretations
The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens, representing philosophy, is believed to be the third painting to be finished there, after La Disputa (Theology) on the opposite wall, and the Parnassus (Literature).
The School of Athens is one of a group of four main frescoes on the walls of the Stanza (those on either side centrally interrupted by windows) that depict distinct branches of knowledge. Each theme is identified above by a separate tondo containing a majestic female figure seated in the clouds, with putti bearing the phrases: "Seek Knowledge of Causes", "Divine Inspiration", "Knowledge of Things Divine" (Disputa), "To Each What Is Due". Accordingly, the figures on the walls below exemplify philosophy, poetry (including music), theology, and justice. The traditional title is not Raphael's. The subject of the painting is actually philosophy, or at least ancient Greek philosophy, and its overhead tondo-label, "Causarum Cognitio", tells us what kind, as it appears to echo Aristotle's emphasis on wisdom as knowing why, hence knowing the causes, in Metaphysics Book I and Physics Book II.
Indeed, Plato and Aristotle appear to be the central figures in the scene. However, many of the philosophers depicted sought knowledge of first causes. Many lived before Plato and Aristotle, and hardly a third were Athenians. The architecture contains Roman elements, but the general semi-circular setting having Plato and Aristotle at its centre might be alluding to Pythagoras' monad.
Commentators have suggested that nearly every great ancient Greek philosopher can be found in the painting, but determining which are depicted is speculative, since Raphael made no designations outside possible likenesses, and no contemporary documents explain the painting. Compounding the problem, Raphael had to invent a system of iconography to allude to various figures for whom there were no traditional visual types. For example, while the Socrates figure is immediately recognizable from Classical busts, one of the figures alleged to be Epicurus is far removed from his standard depiction.
Aspects of the fresco other than the identities of the figures have also been variously interpreted, but few such interpretations are unanimously accepted among scholars. That the rhetorical gestures of Plato and Aristotle are kinds of pointing (to the heavens, and down to earth) is popularly accepted as likely. However, Plato's Timaeus – which is the book Raphael places in his hand – was a sophisticated treatment of space, time, and change, including the Earth, which guided mathematical sciences for over a millennium. Aristotle, with his four-elements theory, held that all change on Earth was owing to motions of the heavens. In the painting Aristotle carries his Ethics, which he denied could be reduced to a mathematical science.
It is not certain how much the young Raphael knew of ancient philosophy, what guidance he might have had from people such as Bramante and whether a detailed program was dictated by his sponsor, Pope Julius II.
Nevertheless, the fresco has often been interpreted as an exhortation to philosophy and as a visual representation of the role of Love in elevating people toward higher knowledge, in consonance with contemporary theories of Marsilio Ficino and other neo-Platonic thinkers linked to Raphael.
Finally, according to Giorgio Vasari, the scene includes accurate portraits of Raphael himself, the Duke of Mantua, Zoroaster and some Evangelists.
An interpretation of the fresco relating to hidden symmetries of the figures and the star constructed by Bramante was given by Guerino Mazzola and collaborators. The main basis are two mirrored triangles on the drawing from Bramante (Euclid), which correspond to the feet positions of certain figures.