School of Athens
School of Athens Raphael Santi was born in Urbino of 1483, he was a painter and architect of the Florentine school in the Italian High Renaissance. He studied under Pietro Perugino; but after leaving Perugino and moving to Florence he soon adopted the styles of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo (who were the artists who had established the High Renaissance style in Florence). During that time, Julius II requested decorations for the stanze (rooms) that Nicholas V had added to the building of the Vatican palace built 50 years earlier by Nicholas III. The pope no longer wished to live in the Borgia apartments decorated by Pinturcchio and once where Alexander VI lived, whom Julius despised. So he chose to have the upstairs rooms redone to his taste. Julius II summoned a number of well-known artists to decorate "his" rooms; Sodoma Bramantino, Lorenzo Litto, and Perugino. When Raphael was introduced to the papal court in 1508 by Bramante (the pope 's architect and trusted adviser in artistic matters) Julius II released all the other artists and gave Raphael individual responsibility for the stanze. The job of Raphael was to paint a number of frescos (painting on wet plaster wall) in the Stanza della Segnatura; Vatican, Rome. Among these was the School of Athens which I have selected to discuss in this paper. (Earls, pages 183-186) (Merlo, pages 98-99) The fresco School of Athens is located in the Vatican in Rome in the Stanza della Segnatura which was the place of the Pope 's library and where the Pope bestowed standard and civil laws. Raphael set about to create a series of frescoes on the walls and ceiling which expressed the four frescos of learning: theology, philosophy, law, and the arts. These frescoes show that Raphael was an educated person, had some knowledge of Greek philosophy and science. The name of the painting had an explanation behind it which was provided by Hartt, "The picture, universally recognized as the culmination of the High Renaissance
Bibliography: Cole, Allison; The Renaissance Dorling Kindersley Limited: London, 1994 Earls Irene; Artists of the Renaissance Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.; Westport CT, 1987 Merlo, Claudio; Three Masters of the Renaissance Barron 's Educational Series: Florence, Italy 1999 O 'Reilly, Wenda PH.D; The Renaissance Art Book Publishers Group West: Berkeley, CA 2000 Wolfflin, Heinrich; Classic Art Phaidon Press Limited: NY, NY 1952