Raphael's School Of Athens Analysis

Raphael 's School of Athens
The work of art I chose for this assignment is one of a series of frescoes by the renaissance artist Raphael. The School of Athens is large, measuring 300 inches wide by 200 inches tall, and is part of a series of frescoes commissioned by Pope Julius II for what is now known as the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The work was completed by Raphael between 1509-1511, and is generally agreed upon to be the second work completed there. Originally titled Causarum Cognitio (Knowledge of Causes), it is commonly referred to as Raphael 's masterpiece (Wikipedia, The School of Athens).
The portrait is bright and full of vibrance and color, all neatly framed for us by an ornate, semicircular archway.
The fresco itself is bathed in light, with the only real darker color values present in the shadows of the gathered people, and inside the overhead archways. These archways mirror the edge of the painting, and their high, patterned ceilings imply a much larger, more open area than where we stand viewing from, which creates an incredible sense of space between this recessed area and the crowd beyond. Shape-wise, these semicircles seem to be the singular standout element of the entire work, and they keep drawing our eyes down and towards the people in the center. The interior of their arches are mesmerizing patterns of hexagons connected by smaller diamond shapes, and a lively element where a plain surface would normally be. Squares and rectangles appear throughout the image as well, from the elongated rectangles forming the columns that support the archways, to the squares framing the small statues below those of Apollo and Athena. A repeating pattern of concentric squares of deep red set against the pale marble gives us the foreground of the piece. There is one cube present as well, that which Heraclitus is propped against. Interestingly, it seems to utilize its own two-point perspective, and appears to be the only item in the picture that breaks from perspective this
there 's a nearly flawless symmetry between the left and right sides; the archways and receding columns are such mirror images that it makes one wonder at how they achieved this on such a large scale in their time. Further creating a balance, Raphael nearly evenly divided the people between each side of the painting - there are 29 on the left side of the center line, and 28 are scattered on the right. There also seems to be a balance between top and bottom, as the open archways become smaller and narrower as they recede towards the center, so is there a somewhat clear area in the foreground that narrows as it nears the two subjects at the center point. Looking from them through the rest of the crowd, I notice a large amount of variety in the types of clothes the people are wearing, but more at the variety of colors on display. No two garments are shaded the same, and a quick glance over the crowd provides a whirlwind of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Despite the contrast, this does provide a sense of unity to the image, making the individuals and groups all seem as one whole, even though they are spread across the image. I get a real sense of movement from the crowd as well, from the central focus of Plato and Aristotle, moving left through the crowd we see outstretched and pointing hands which seem to guide the way from one person to the next, and then back down towards