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The School Of Athens

Home - Questioning The Painting - Analyzing Figures - Connecting To Literature - Architecture - The Painter - Coming Full Circle - Bibliography

"CONNECTING THE PAINTING TO LITERATURE"

"A number of scholars have already suggested that Raphael's source might have been a written text. After all, books play a strikingly conspicuous role in this painting at least eleven are depicted. Whether or not, as Franz Wickhoff has plausibly suggested, the Stanza della Segnatura was intended to serve as Pope Julius II's private library, it is certain that, for the Renaissance, Greek philosophy existed essentially not only as specific doctrines and systems but above all in the form of numerous bulky manuscripts and a few hefty printed editions. For a Renaissance painter or scholar who wanted to find out what Greek philosophers engaged in their characteristic occupations had looked like, nothing would have been more natural than to turn for such information to one of these books. But which one? The search for such a book goes back at least to mid-nineteenth century" (Most, 162)

No text was ever found that could be brought into connection with The School of Athens painting but there is a text that can be considered as it states individuals in the painting and concentrates on their organization, activities and interrelations. This text is Plato's Protagoras. The passage that begins at the beginning of this text could possible connect to Raphael's painting.

"Young Hippocrates has excitedly awakened Socrates early in the morning because the great sophist Protagoras has come to Athens and is staying in the house of Callias, one of the wealthiest men in the city. Socrates and Hippocrates set off for this, the greatest and most magnificent house of Athens and after passing the doorkeeper they light upon the scene described here. In a great hall, they have come upon a large number of sophists and their disciples fully immersed in their character occupations: a first, largest group organized symmetrically like a silent chorus around a central discoursing figure; a second, independent, smaller group devoted to solving problems and to matters natural and celestial; and a third, independent, smaller group whose intellectual content is hard to ascertain despite concerted efforts to do so, and that also includes a strikingly beautiful young man." - Protagoras

In its basic conception and in many details, Plato's text is strikingly similar to Raphael's painting, despite the evident differences in the two media involved. The luxurious hall, the theatrical immersion of the figures in their typical activities, and the carefree anachronism that juxtaposes celebrities to demonstrate affinities and affiliations without regard to historical probability are all the same. Socrates is of course no longer the narrator (how could a narrator have possibly been represented in this fresco?) but instead is placed in a position of special prominence, to the left of the chorus surrounding Plato and Aristotle. But beyond such individual details, both the text and the fresco share the same fundamental division into three groups and the same thematic characterization of all three. In Plato, the first group is composed of listeners who symmetrically flank and follow a single speaker, Protagoras, and wheel about as a chorus wherever he moves. In Raphael, the emphatic symmetry of the Platonic text is not only represented by the bipartite distribution of the listeners but has now resulted in the duplication of the central figure; no longer Protagoras alone, but now Plato and Aristotle together represent the central focus." (Most, 164-165)

"For the second group, Raphael has transformed Plato's description of Hippias engaged in answering astronomical questions about nature and the celestial bodies by dividing it into two parts: his geometer is busy solving a problem for the benefit of his four students, while Ptolemy and another figure hold up terrestrial and celestial gloves in order to identify a particular field of knowledge for their viewers. Ptolemy wears a crown, for this most eminent representative of ancient geography and astronomy was traditionally confused with the homonymous Egyptian dynasts, but for the reader familiar with Plato's text the royal insignia may have a further point, for Hippias is twice said to be sitting on a throne.

In Plato's third group, Socrates tries in vain to understand Prodicus' words, but despite his efforts their meaning remains concealed to him. In Raphael's fresco, it is Pythagora's doctrine that is enticing the pair of snoops crouching behind him which makes perfect sense, for Pythagoras was celebrated for the silence he imposed upon his disciples and the secrecy with which he shrouded his doctrines. No other ancient philosopher could more aptly have suggested the theme of the concealment of wisdom. And Raphael's youth in white, whose great beauty, direct glance, clothes coloring, and anomalous position particularly strike the viewer, is reminiscent of the one youth in the Platonic scene upon whose beauty Socrates lingers lovingly; if so, we might be tempter to name him Agathon." (Most, 165-166)

"Can these similarities be attributed to chance? I do not think it possible definitively to refute anyone who would insist upon explaining them away in these terms. But those, like myself, to whom they seem much too extensive and too detailed to be the effect of mere chance are confronted with a series of interesting and difficult questions." (Most, 166)