Roman Painting and the School of Athens
Roman Painting and the School of Athens
In the early 1500's Raphael was chosen by Julius II to paint a number of frescos in the Stanza Della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome. Among these was the School of Athens which I have selected to discuss in this paper.
Raphael, who had studied art since the age of seven under the teacher Perugino in Umbria, arrived in Florence at the age of twenty-two and achieved immediate success. Raphael was influenced by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo who were the artists who had established the High Renaissance style in Florence.
The great masters of the High Renaissance style lived in an era when the Roman Catholic church had seized political power. The Popes believed they were the heirs of the Caesars, and they partly exploited their own political ends to realize their fantastic expectations of renewing the old glory of the Roman Empire. The Romans believed that Rome was the centre of western civilization and those with power and influence looked back to the Classics as inspiration for their renewed interest in intellectual thought.
From the time of Sixtus IV (1471-84) Rome became a centre for artistic production. But it was not until the rule of Julius II (1503-13), when Bramante, Michelangelo and Leonardo finally settled in Rome that the period of artistic activity flourished and produced the style of the High Renaissance.
The fact that the great artists of that time worked almost exclusively in the service of the Church impacted significantly on the themes and the subject matter of High Renaissance Art. The religious art produced at that time did not emphasize spiritual supramundane values of previous eras, instead solemnity, majesty, might and glory were visually portrayed. In the words of Hauser, the inwardness and other-worldliness of Christian feeling yielded to aloof coldness and the expression of physical as well as intellectual superiority. He also suggests that the Popes of that time had as their main goal to immortalize themselves thinking more of their own glory than the glory of God.
It was in the Stanza della Segnatura which housed the Pope's library and where the Pope dispensed canon and civil law, that Raphael set about to create a series of frescoes on the walls and ceiling which expressed the four...