School of Athens, The

Fresco painted 1509 by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael Sanzio in the Stanza della Segnatura of the Vatican, Rome. It is a companion painting to the Disputà. As the latter represents the triumph of Christianity, so The School of Athens represents the advance of philosophy and learning.

It shows the colonnade of a stately Temple of Knowledge adorned with statues of Apollo and Minerva. The central figures of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle are surrounded by others symbolic of various forms of science and education.

Not all the characters are identifiable but, as in the Disputà, some of the philosophers are actually contemporary portraits – Raphael himself appears, as does a brooding Michelangelo in the foreground and the architect Donato Bramante, as a geometer with compasses.