![]() Raphael’s The School of Athens was painted at some point between 15 the usual date given is 1509 to 1511. Yet the rest of his picture is surprisingly ambiguous, equivocal, or obscure, and does not easily yield its secrets. In his depictions of Plato and Aristotle, Raphael single-handedly created an iconographic tradition. Raphael could not rely on available archaeological evidence for philosophers’ faces (other than that of Socrates) nor was there any ready-made iconographical tradition to provide him with a wide range of ‘attributes’ – which, in art historical terms, is any symbol that enables easy identification of a given figure. The Greek tradition is different: we have few solid notions about the appearances of statesmen, poets or anyone else, beyond Socrates, Alexander the Great, and a handful of others whose likenesses were captured, and have survived to this day. We know what Cicero and Julius Caesar looked like, and we have countless portrait busts and coins to give us some idea of how many Roman aristocrats (and most emperors) looked. Raphael is of special interest to Classicists because he created the way we imagine Ancient Greek philosophers. ![]() Goethe wanted to feel instantly enraptured, only to find out the hard way that Raphael’s art demands patience and concentration.Ī sly self-portrait of Raphael (detail from ‘The School of Athens’). The pleasure of the first impression is incomplete the delight only becomes whole when one has gradually examined and studied everything. only once, and it is as though we one were supposed to study Homer in a partially-obliterated, damaged manuscript. 1786: So far I have seen the loggias of Raphael and the great paintings of School of Athens etc. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) records, in the travel diaries that were later edited and published as his Italian Journey (1816–17):ħ th Nov. This modesty and restraint has delighted, and sometimes frustrated, Raphael’s admirers. He was a passionate antiquarian, and used his expertise as an archaeologist as an inspiration for his art yet he was too dignified to show off his knowledge, preferring to wear his learning lightly. Raphael (1483–1520) is the most influential painter of the Italian Renaissance his work embodies the balance, order, harmony and restraint of classicism. Like Studying Homer in a “Damaged Manuscript” ![]() ‘The School of Athens’, Raphael, c.1509–11 (Stanza della Segnatura, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City).
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