Stanze della Segnatura

Yes, the school of Athens is simply marvellous. I was fortunate enough to see it close up and personal this past summer in the Vatican, where it is part of a room designed for the Pope's high brow guests. Here is a little from Wikipedia:

The four Stanze di Raffaello ("Raphael's rooms") in the Palace of the Vatican form a suite of reception rooms, the public part of the papal apartments. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, these are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.

I assume you all know about the famous gestures of Plato, pointing upwards to the world of ideas, and his best student, Aristotle, pointing downwards to the classification of the natural world. Socrates is supposed to be the guy in blue sitting on the steps, looking like a homeless person. I was alwayc curious as to what the guy on the left was scribbling, and I finally satisfied my curiosity when I looked at it from half a foot away: he is writing some Greek geometrical formula (or perhaps a music formula? Look at the Greek words combined with the Roman numerals...how Renaissance is that!)


I am also attaching two more pictures. The first one is the ceiling in one of the adjacent rooms (stanze). I don't think it's Raphael though. It symbolizes how the advent of Christianity (cross) has shattered the ancient world (the broken statue), a very appropriate theme for the Pope's palace... And yet, throughout Rome and in all the religious establishments (e.g. cardinals' houses, even churches), I saw tons of classical art that they comissioned, both original and copies. Clearly these people appreciated the worldly and luscious beauty of the pagan world they were seemingly substituting and condemning...now, if that is not the definition of hypocrisy, I don't know what is! Anyway, the second one is Raphael (in one of the other stanzas) and it's called 'The burning of Troy.' Remember Aeneas from the first OCL book, who narrowly escaped with his father and fled to Italy? You can see him carrying dad on his back, on the lower left of the fresco. Just to give you an idea of the grand scale of this thing, look at how low the visitors' heads are...

Ok, I need to stop talking about Rome and the Vatican, cuz I could be writing all night. I hope everyone is doing well in your respective classes and jobs. Let's hang in there---it's only one more week!


EM.