The School of Athens

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2009

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens – the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s private library in the Vatican. The fresco depicts some of the most famous philosophers of ancient times, including Aristotle and Plato, engaged in discussion amidst the splendour of a classical Renaissance chamber. It is considered to be one of the greatest images in Western art not only because of Raphael’s skill as a painter, but also his ability to have created an enduring image that continues to inspire philosophical debate today. Raphael captured something essential about the philosophies of these two men, but he also revealed much about his own time. That such a pagan pair could be found beside a Pope in private tells of the complexity of intellectual life at the time when classical learning was reborn in what we now call the Renaissance.With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Warwick; Valery Rees, Renaissance scholar and senior member of the Language Department at the School of Economic Science; Jill Kraye, Professor of the History of Renaissance Philosophy and Librarian at the Warburg Institute at the University of London

Transcript

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0:45.1	Hello despite the not unimpressive feet of commissioning the Sistine Chapel
0:48.8	ceiling point Julius the second is better known as a warrior than a scholar
0:52.2	but when you did put down the sword
0:54.2	and pick up a book, he would have done so under a magnificent if slightly unexpected fresco.
0:58.9	It's called The School of Athens.
1:00.8	It was painted by Raffel in about 15 1509 and it sits in a room in the Vatican
1:04.8	that housed Julius's private library. The School of Athens depicts an imaginary scene in which
1:10.4	philosophers of several eras are gathered together at at the Centist and Plato and Aristotle in discussion.
1:16.5	Plato is pointing at the sky and Aristotle at the ground.
1:20.3	In that
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