Plato, Aristotle & Other Greek Philosophers in Raphael’s Renaissance Masterpiece, The School of Athens

Among the won­ders to behold at the Vat­i­can Muse­ums are the larg­er-than-life forms of the titans of Greek phi­los­o­phy. It’s wide­ly known that at the cen­ter of Raphael’s fres­co The School of Athens, which dom­i­nates one wall of the twelve Stanze di Raf­fael­lo in the Apos­tolic Palace, stand Pla­to and Aris­to­tle. In real­i­ty, of course, the two were not con­tem­po­raries: more than three decades sep­a­rat­ed the for­mer’s death from the lat­ter’s birth. But in Raphael’s artis­tic vision, great men (and pos­si­bly a great woman) of all gen­er­a­tions come togeth­er under the ban­ner of learn­ing, from Anax­i­man­der to Aver­roes, Epi­cu­rus to Euclid, and Par­menides to Pythago­ras.

Even in this com­pa­ny, the fig­ure sit­ting at the bot­tom of the steps catch­es one’s eye. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this, and gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne lays them out in his new Great Art Explained video on The School of Athens above.

It appears to rep­re­sent Her­a­cli­tus, the pre-Socrat­ic philoso­pher asso­ci­at­ed with ideas like change and the uni­ty of oppo­sites, and a nat­ur­al can­di­date for inclu­sion in what amounts to a trans-tem­po­ral class por­trait of phi­los­o­phy. But Raphael seems to have added him lat­er, after that sec­tion of the pic­ture was already com­plete. An astute view­er may also notice Her­a­cli­tus’ hav­ing been ren­dered in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, more mus­cu­lar style than that of the oth­er philoso­phers in the frame — a style more like the one on dis­play over in the Sis­tine Chapel.

In fact, Michelan­ge­lo was at work on his Sis­tine Chapel fres­coes at the very same time Raphael was paint­ing The School of Athens. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble, as Payne tells it, for Raphael to have stolen a glimpse of Michelan­gelo’s stun­ning work, then gone back and added Michelan­ge­lo-as-Her­a­cli­tus to his own com­po­si­tion in trib­ute. There was prece­dent for this choice: Raphael had already mod­eled Socrates after Leonar­do da Vin­ci (who was, incred­i­bly, also alive and active at the time), and even ren­dered the ancient painter Apelles as a self-por­trait. With The School of Athens, Payne says, Raphael was “posi­tion­ing ancient philoso­phers as pre­cur­sors to Chris­t­ian truth,” in line with the think­ing of the Renais­sance. In sub­tler ways, he was also empha­siz­ing how the genius of the past lives on — or is, rather, reborn — in the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

Artist Turns Famous Paint­ings, from Raphael to Mon­et to Licht­en­stein, Into Inno­v­a­tive Sound­scapes

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Ancient Phi­los­o­phy: Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.