Multiple Perspectives « Propaganda » Essay

 

Rafael’s The School of Athens is a great example of an artwork which, due to its highly complex composition and expansive subject, has not only provided a considerable range of interpretations by art historians and critics of different times, from Giorgio Vasari to Ernst Gombrich, but its popularity had further resulted in its frequent reproduction up to the late nineteenth century by such artists as Anton Raphael Mengs and Paul Balze. While all perceptions seem to agree on the more perfunctory theme of the fresco, that of philosophic thinking and the research of truth, each approaches the visual and formal, as well as the contextual, properties of the painting in different ways. The analysis of these contrasting understandings and creative versions of the painting will be addressed and used as evidence for the appearance of references to the influence of Classical Antiquity on the Italian Renaissance in tandem with the discard of the medieval artistic portrayal of religious iconography, the cultural relationship between Ancient Greece and Rome and the artist’s respect and admiration for classical philosophical thinking and theories in the painting.

 

In The School of Athens, the viewer is invited into a Classical interior, whereby the visual complexity of the painting mimics the complexity of intellectual life at the time when classical thinking was reborn. Nevertheless, despite its visual intricacy, the painting demonstrates Rafael’s understanding of spacial relationships and outstanding ability of placing a large number of figures (sixty) in an aesthetic and symmetric harmony, balance and order, successfully preventing overcrowding. As Heinrich Wölfflin explains in Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance, “What is evident is Raphael’s artistry in orchestrating a beautiful space, continuous with that of viewers in the Stanza, in which a great variety of human figures, each one expressing “mental states by physical actions,” interact, in a “polyphony” unlike anything in earlier art, in the ongoing dialogue of Philosophy.”[1] This is clearly achieved by the horizontal division of the philosophers and mathematicians by the stairs that run across the mural, as well as the vertical division by two central figures, Plato and Aristotle, generating an equal amount of space on either side of the agora. These two philosophers seem to be reconciled pictorially by the arch emerging above them, setting them apart from the other bodies. As indicated by the video produced by Columbia University’s Media Center for Art History, “they [plato and Aristotle] alone are framed against celestial bloom. And their generating centrality is confirmed by the resonant expansion of their framing arch: the essential structural element of the entire composition.”[2] However, although the presence of the vanishing point in this imaginary horizon seems to create a sense of real space, both within the painting and around the viewer, Agatina-Maria Teritzis argues that the figures featured in The School of Athens are located in an “unusual familiar space [that] is neither enclosed, nor open [and where] we can only see people, marble and sky, no water, no vegetation”: something which makes the setting look like “a non existing utopia,” which “sows the greatest imaginaries.” [3] The appearance of this painting as a “utopia” could arguably derive from the way in which Raphael blends Greek practices and Roman traditions: demonstrated by the incorporation of Roman architecture (probably a Roman pantheon) in a solely Greek setting, as well as the disguise of the Greek Goddess Athena (the marble statue on the dextral portion of the painting) as the Roman Goddess of Wisdom: Minerva.[4] Concurrently, although Angie Hobs, Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, recognizes that “the architecture is Roman, not Greek,” she takes into consideration the possibility that Raphael might not “even really know about the difference between Greek and Roman architectural styles because not a lot of people did know a great deal about Greek architecture at the time so it may be that he just is painting what he thinks is a […] general antique style.”[5] In fact, this majestically arched building probably shows Donato Bramante’s design for St Peter’s Basilica, which was devised at the time of his collaboration with Raphael around 1509.[6] Nevertheless, there is a remarkably close relationship between Bramante’s plan for the dome of St Peter’s and that of the pantheon of Ancient Rome:[7] something which, displays, once more, Renaissance artists’ appreciation and glorification of the classical period.

 

Raphael also seems to have paid particular attention to the use of color as an instrument for a greater conveyance of meaning and purpose. Overall, Rafael has operated with a pallet of warm pigments, most frequently using different tones of red: a color mostly associated with the idea of wisdom and power. Yet, the fact that all of the subjects are wearing colorful robes, giving the painting a certain vivacity, symbolizes their high rank in the realm of education. The importance of color for Rafael can be further proved by Giorgio Vasari’s description of Diana Polymastes’ garment: “Her garment is of four colours, representing the elements – from her head down the colour of fire; below her waist the colour of air; from her thighs to her knees the colour of earth; and from there to her feet the colour of water.”[8]

 

Finally, Raphael’s use of tone is of exceptional quality. His mastery of the chiaroscuro, both to illustrate underlying body structures and define the surrounding architecture, creates three-dimensionality, depth and shape. Although the light radiating through the windows creates darkness on the ceiling of the domes, the lightning in the painting seems to derive from many different sides of the agora, giving off a powerful brightness, which transmits the idea of intellectual thought.

 

A comparison between how Gombrich and Vasari write about the same work can provide a greater insight on its context of and the artist’s possible intentions. Vasari’s account of the subject of the painting is as follows: “Having been greeted very affectionately by Pope Julius upon his arrival, Raphael began a scene in the Room of the Segnatura depicting the theologians reconciling Philosophy and Astrology with Theology in which he portrayed all the wise men of the world representing different arguments.”[9] In his book Symbolic Images, however, Ernst Gombrich challenges and corrects Vasari’s report by stating that “these opening words of Vasari’s account… naturally set the key for the interpretations of the conviction that the subject of this cycle was meant to be of isolating philosophical import, he also enforced the interpretation by isolating the individual frescos from their intellectual and decorative context.”[10] Clearly, Gombrich blames Vasari for the misunderstanding of the iconography of The School of Athens by subsequent art historians: who analyzed individual constituents of the agora, instead of looking at the composition as a whole. Gombrich further opposes Vasari’s “connoisseurial”[11] approach by suggesting that one doesn’t need to read philosophical, theological and poetic connotations in order to understand Raphael’s The School of Athens. Instead, it is enough to understand the purpose behind its creation: which is to recall the ideal form of existence, whereby the greatest thinkers of Ancient Greece gathered to share ideas and learn from each other.

 

Similarly to Vasari, Johann Joachim Winckelmann felt entitled to decipher hidden, symbolic meanings from visuals.  However, due to the lack of accurate illustration of the artworks under discussion (Vasari and Wickelmann relied on prints and engravings that could be misleading), Gombrich argues, these two historians made assumptions based on the aesthetic elements of the artwork without proving the relevance of their analysis in relation to artist’s intention. To give an example, Vasari interpreted the figure that “bends towards the ground with a pair of compasses in his hand and turning them on a tablet” as “the architect Bramante.”[12]

 

Once again, however, Gombrich disputes Vasari’s assertion by interpreting this figure as a simple geometer.[13] Evidently, although Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects has been considered as the foundation for art-historical writing, it still has a considerable amount of challenges to it. While the biographical details of the artist was of little concern to Vasari and Winckelmann, who, instead, concentrated on the aesthetic properties of an artwork as a means of fully understanding the message it conveyed,[14] we can notice from Agatina-Maria Teritzis’ description of the painting, the importance of the artist’s role in framing the emotional and intellectual essence of his artwork: “Raphael imprints his version in every face in his work, in every movement. Every object tells us his faith in the great human movement that changes the world […] He offers humans a projection of the world they desire. This is the conscious choice of the twenty-seven year old Raphael. He does not want to sketch the real world, but direct the world, which invites us. He paints the ancient sky of the new world […] He paints what we dream of.”[15] Professedly, the consideration of Raphael’s character further proves his admiration and preference of antiquity and classical thought and his desire to excavate Rome and rebuild it “on the foundations of the ancient.”[16]

 

Raphael’s The School of Athens was extensively copied because of its innovative design and imposing architecture. The first reproduction of this painting, now found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was devised in Rome between 1752 and 1755 by Anton Raphael Mengs and was commissioned by Hugh Smithson Percy, the first Duke of Northumberland, for the long gallery at his house in London, England. Once executed, Mengs gave it a new title, “philosophy.” This could reflect how Mengs diverted the emphasis of the painting from the representation of the Greek and Roman roots of Western Civilization to the practice of philosophy as a more isolated activity. Mengs also made several changes to the original piece by Raphael in order to suit its new location: adapting the whole composition to a more rectangular format by slightly truncating and compressing the architecture of the agora at the top of the painting, as well as adding figures on the sides.[17] As Mengs’ first major commission, this copy manifests the English collectors’ desire to own Italian Renaissance Art. Even more remarkably, it appears, from his treatise Riflessioni sopra i tre gran pittori, Raffaello, il Correggio e Tiziano e sopra gli Antichi, as though Mengs actually accepted Duke Percy’s commission because it would have allowed him to improve his knowledge on Raphael’s art.[18] In fact, Mengs’ re-execution of Raphael’s masterpiece was so carefully painted that in 1760, Sir Thomas Robinson wrote that it was “coloured better than the original,” while in the next century, Gustav Waagen admitted that it was “undoubtedly the best copy ever made of this celebrated picture.”[19] The replication of Raphael’s painting by Mengs was, all the same, significantly expensive. As Jeremy Wood argues in Raphael Copies and Exemplary Picture Galleries in Mid Eighteenth Century London, with the same amount of money, the duke of Northumberland could have bought the original. This raises a main question: why did Duke Percy commission a copy of a work, which could neither be bought nor be removed from its original setting? Arguably, the duke of Northumberland valued works of a distant past as much as Raphael cherished the antique mentality and wanted to maintain, as well as emphasize, the artwork’s place in the history of Italian art.[20] Correspondingly, the duke perhaps understood the importance of the relationship between the location of the artwork and its reference to the cultural concerns making up the society in which Raphael lived: that of the rediscovery of pagan antiquity and its absorption into the Italian Christian Church. Notwithstanding, almost a century later Paul Balze, a renowned French painter who had copied over fifty paintings by Raphael for the French government, made a copy of The School of Athens, which was to be permanently placed in the Rotunda Annex of the University of Virginia by 1857.[21] Two of the fifty-two copies made by Balze, which were replications of Raphael’s The School of Athens (one situated in the library of St. Genevieve and the other in the Pantheon), particularly stroke the attention of Daniel H. London of Richmond, Virginia, who firstly suggested that a copy of Raphael’s painting should be presented to the University of Virginia by its alumni, during his visit to Europe: which aimed at the discovery of such a competent artist able to “execute the task in a manner that would reflect the highest honor upon himself and the cause.”[22] Therefore, in 1854, Paul Balze begins working on a painting, which the “London Athenaeum” of July 26^th 1856 describe as “a good and careful one, and […] more easy and pleasant to study than the original, which is smoked and gloomy.”[23] Furthermore, Horace Vernet disputes Gustav Waagen’s opinion on Mengs’ copy in his letter to Paul Balze: “no one so well as yourself has reproduced the masterpiece of this great artist with a clearer knowledge of their perfection.” In both cases, however, it seems as though, by looking at public perception, Mengs and Balze achieved a greater formal and technical excellence than Raphael in the realization of The School of Athens. Yet, the same tendency of a somewhat projection to the past presents itself in the aspiration of the three artists: whether this involves the veneration of the Ancient era or the adoration of Renaissance painting.

 

The analysis of Raphael’s painting trough the lens of philosophy illustrates the essence or basis of the Renaissance. Prior to the Middle Ages, Greek manuscripts and the ideas of Plato and Aristotle were lost knowledge in European countries: where Christian writings dominated. That is to say, following the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a prevalent disregard of Greek texts, which remained un-translated for a long period of time. This period of intellectual darkness also affected the artistic imagination of the time, limiting it to the portrayal of Christian and biblical motifs and beliefs. Nonetheless, the Islamic translation of Greek antique texts set the break in this trend during the twelfth century: which saw Europeans increasing their contacts with the Islamic world and seek translations of Greek scientific and philosophical treatises, especially those by Aristotle.[24] This spread of knowledge in Western Europe lead to the revitalization of its philosophical roots: a change, which demonstrated itself through the development of artistic achievements during the Italian Renaissance. Such artists as Raphael now began to depict theories of classical antiquity and a different vision of life, instead of using art as a vector for religious beliefs, demonstrating their increasing interest in the Ancient Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. In fact, Raphael’s The School of Athens creates a profoundly intellectual, rather than spiritual, scene, gathering the icons of ancient philosophy: from Aristotle and Plato, to Socrates and Epicurus.[25] Melvyn Bragg and Valery Rees seem to support this reasoning in a BBC Radio 4 broadcast by stating that “this painting encapsulates the renaissance view of the history of philosophy,” as well as draws “on what had been going on in the past couple of generations […] where there was an attempt to bring the whole of philosophic endeavor from the past to the service of the present […] It was important that they had brought into play so many classical philosophers who had been forgotten in the intervening centuries.”[26] Indeed, Raphael successfully uses visual forms as a means of evoking philosophical connotations. A clear example of this technique can be recognized through Plato’s rhetorical gesture of pointing at the sky, which does not infer that reality literally lies in the heavens, but could directly refer to his belief that the world is a semi-real image or imitation of the eternal and unchanging material forms, as expressed in the Timaeus.[27] Nevertheless, the fact that Raphael’s fresco is situated in the Vatican challenges the independence of philosophy on religion as well as the change in artistic portrayal from spiritual iconography to solely humanist concepts. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola once wrote that the truth is sought by philosophy and possessed by religion:[28] a message, which Jill Kayle believes to be transmitted from Raphael’s painting.[29]

 

Although there is a large number of highly different interpretations on the visual and biographical connotation of Raphael’s The School of Athens, this painting certainly mirrors the society that the artist lived in. Thus, Raphael’s masterpiece is a visual representation of, not only philosophical theories, but of the rediscovery of Ancient Greek texts in the twelfth century: something which lead to the transformation of intellectual life in Medieval Italy and Western Europe. This way, The School of Athens, as well as its numerous reinterpretations, act as a projection to an admired past: a past, which, according to Valery Rees, “[is] made to live again.”

 

Bibliography

 

Arnold, Diana. “What Is Art History.” In Art History : A Very Short Introduction, 29-53.

 

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

 

 

 

Barringer, Paul Brandon, James Mercer Garnett, and Roswell Page. “The School of

 

Athens.” In University of Virginia: Its History, Influence, Equipment and

 

            Characteristics, with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Founders,

 

            Benefactors, Officers and Alumni, Volume 1, 281-286. Vol. 1. New York: Lewis

 

Publishing Company, 1904.

 

 

 

Benson, Robert Louis, Giles Constable, and Carol Dana Lanham. Renaissance and

 

 Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

 

 

 

Falkener, Edward. “On the Advantage of the Study of Antiquity and on Excellence in

 

Art.” In Museum of Classical Antiquities: A Quarterly Journal of Architecture and the Sister Branches of Classic Art, 1-16. Vol. 1. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1851.

 

 

 

Gombrich, Ernst H. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford: Phaidon, 1972.

 

 

 

Janson, Horst Woldemar, and Anthony F. Janson. History of Art: The Western Tradition.

 

Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2004.

 

 

 

Mengs, Anton Raphael, Giuseppe Nicola D’Azara, Giovanni Battista Dafori, Carlo

 

Giuseppe Ratti, Carlo Fea, and José Maria Fonseca De Evora. “Riflessioni Sopra I Tre Gran Pittori, Raffaello, Il Correggio E Tiziano E Sopra Gli Antichi.” In Opere Di Antonio Raffaello Mengs Primo Pittore Della Maestà Del Re Cattolico Carlo III, 93-155. Roma: Stamperia Pagliarini, 1787.

 

 

 

Della Mirandola, Giovanni Pico. Opera Omnia Ioannis Pici Mirandulae …: Sunt Autem

 

Haec Quae Ab Hoc Autore … Scripta Sunt Heptaeus De Dei Creatoris Sex Dierum Opere Geneseos. Per Heinricum Petri, 1557.

 

 

 

“Raphael’s Fresco of the School of Athens.” YouTube video. 18:04. Posted by

 

“Columbiauniversity,” March 5, 2010. Accessed November 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOrG6jfBzEU.

 

 

 

“Raffaello Sanzio.” Web Gallery of Art. Accessed November 9, 2014.

 

http://www.wga.hu/bio_m/r/raphael/biograph.html.

 

 

 

“Saint Peter’s Basilica.” Smarthistory. Accessed November 9, 2014.

 

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/saint-peters-basilica.html.

 

 

 

“The School of Athens (after Raphael).” Victoria and Albert Museum. Accessed

 

November 9, 2014. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89799/the-school-of-athens-after-oil-painting-mengs-anton-raphael/.

 

 

 

“School of Athens EN.” YouTube video. 38:10. Posted by “Kostas Poulidis,” September

 

24, 2011. Accessed November 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK2Ixth6p_k.

 

 

 

“The School of Athens.” BBC Radio 4. Narrated by Melvyn Bragg. BBC, March 26

 

2009. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j7txt.

 

 

 

Vasari, Giorgio, Julia Conaway Bondanella, and Peter Bondanella. “Raphael of Urbino.”

 

In The Lives of the Artists, 305-338. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

 

 

 

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance. London:

 

Phaidon, 1953.

 

 

 

Wood, Jeremy. “Raphael Copies and Exemplary Picture Galleries in Mid Eighteenth

 

Century London.” In Zeitschrift Für Kungstgeschichte, 394. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin.

 

 

 

Zeyl, Donald. “Plato’s Timaeus.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 25,

 

2005. Accessed October 26, 2014. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/.