Raphael's "The School of Athens"

Posted in By Arif-Faiz 0 comments



Rebirth, Change, Curiosity, Knowledge. All these words describe the Renaissance. Religion, Power, Competition, Rivalry. These are also words that help you picture the times of the Renaissance. Most of the knowledge gained in the Renaissance, was influenced from the Middle Ages, developing on the way.

"The School of Athens", a painting by famous Renaissance artist, Raphael, is currently housed in the Papal Palace in the Vatican. This fresco painting shows the gathering of some of the greatest minds in history, although not all of them have encountered each other in their lifetime, but in the painting, they were all studying, situated in the same room.

Who Would I Be?
If I were to choose someone that I could relate to in "The School of Athens", I would choose
Socrates. Socrates was the first of the three great Athenian philosophers (the other two; Plato and Aristotle). When Socrates was in his forties, he began to feel an urge to learn about the world around him. He began to try to answer difficult questions (at that time) like, "What is beauty?", "What is wisdom?", "What is the right thing to do?". He began to go around Athens, asking people these questions. Sometimes the people just said they were busy, but sometimes they would try to answer him. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better by asking them more questions which showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even tried to beat him up, for trying to learn more. I think I could relate to Socrates because I also like to ask questions, that people would be annoyed by (even though they wouldn't beat me up). If I don't get answers, I ask myself and think reasonably how to answer these questions.

In "The School of Athens", Plato and Aristotle were the main philosophers in the painting. Although Plato was trained by Socrates, his trainer himself isn't included as one of the main philosophers in "The School of Athens".