School of Athens

Have you ever wondered "what am I looking at?" when it came to the most famous paintings of our time. Well don't feel bad because I was in the same position a long time ago. Here are some little known facts and description of some of the most important piece. Who knows this may come in handy one day.

Composition:

God is depicted as an elderly white-bearded man wrapped in a swirling cloak while Adam, on the lower left, is completely nude. God's right arm is outstretched to impart the spark of life from his own finger into that of Adam, whose left arm is extended in a pose mirroring God's, a reminder that man is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26). Another point is that Adam's finger and God's finger are not touching. It gives the impression that God, the giver of life, is reaching out to Adam who has yet to receive it; they are not on "the same level" as would be two humans shaking hands, for instance.

#fact

The Sistine chapel is part of the pope’s official residence in Vatican City. Michelangelo painted the 12,000 square foot ceiling with various characters from the Bible — the most famous being the image of God creating Adam in the middle.

The Creation of Adam

This wall painting, located in the Vatican, contains pictures of many famous philosophers. Plato and Aristotle are the two in the middle. As an inside joke, Raphael based Plato’s face on fellow artist Leonardo da Vinci. He also included Michelangelo and himself elsewhere in the painting.

1: Zeno of Citium

2: Epicurus 3: unknown 4: Boethius or Anaximander

5: Averroes 6: Pythagoras

7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great or Pericles

8: Antisthenes or Xenophon

9: unknown (sometimes identified as Hypatia in recent popular sources) or Fornarina as a personification of Love (Francesco Maria della Rovere?)

10: Aeschines 11: Parmenides or Nicomachus 12: Socrates or Anaxagoras

13: Heraclitus (Michelangelo?) 14: Plato (Leonardo da Vinci?)

15: Aristotle (Giuliano da Sangallo?) 16: Diogenes of Sinope or Socrates

17: Plotinus? 18: Euclid or Archimedes (Bramante?)

19: Strabo or Zoroaster? (Baldassare Castiglione?) 20: Ptolemy R: Apelles (Raphael)

21: Protogenes (Il Sodoma or Timoteo Viti)

In the center of the fresco, at its architecture's central vanishing point, are the two undisputed main subjects: Plato on the left and Aristotle, his student, on the right. Both figures hold modern (of the time), bound copies of their books in their left hands, while gesturing with their right.

Plato holds Timaeus, Aristotle his Nicomachean Ethics. Plato is depicted as old, grey, wise-looking, and bare-foot. By contrast Aristotle, slightly ahead of him, is in mature manhood, handsome, well-shod and dressed with gold, and the youth about them seem to look his way. In addition, these two central figures gesture along different dimensions: Plato vertically, upward along the picture-plane, into the beautiful vault above; Aristotle on the horizontal plane at right-angles to the picture-plane (hence in strong foreshortening), initiating a powerful flow of space toward viewers.

It is popularly thought that their gestures indicate central aspects of their philosophies, for Plato, his Theory of Forms, and for Aristotle, his empiricist views, with an emphasis on concrete particulars. Many interpret the painting to show a divergence of the two philosophical schools. Plato argues a sense of timelessness whilst Aristotle looks into the physicality of life and the present realm.

Thanks for reading !