Raphael, School of Athens (detail)

Description

The fresco, framed by a painted arch, represents the most famous philosophers and mathematicians of antiquity intent on dialoguing with each other, inside an imaginary classical building, represented in perfect perspective. The figures are basically arranged in a book, that is, on two floors defined by a wide staircase that cuts through the entire scene. A first and more numerous group is arranged on either side of a central pair of conversing figures, identified as Plato and Aristotle. A second autonomous group, in which the thinkers interested in the knowledge of nature and celestial phenomena have been identified, is arranged in the foreground on the left, while a third, also independent, restricted and symmetrically arranged to the second, is difficult to identify the intellectual sphere, despite the efforts of scholars; clue is the presence of a figure identified as Euclid (or Archimedes, in the guise of Donato Bramante) intent on tracing a geometric demonstration.