Renaissance scholars have mentioned the architectural background in Raphael's painting, The School of Athens (1509-11) either for its derivation from ancient Roman architecture or for its possible connection to the new building of St. Peter's Basilica, two assumptions worth exploring. In the painting the gathering of great philosophical and scientific minds takes place in an open arcade four steps up from a ground pavement at eye level. The actors on this stage set are arranged nearly symmetrically on either side of a central vertical line in the painting which I've superimposed here:
Raphael wanted to present a world of philosophy divided between two basic ideas represented by Plato and Aristotle, that is, on the left, philosophers caught up in the IDEAL WORLD, the world of pure math and pure logic, hence people like Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras, who thought the world of ideas one of perfection; and, on the right, philosophers who believed in a REALISTIC WORLD, the world of pragmatism and observational science, people like Aristotle, Euclid, Diogenes the Cynic, and Ptolemy, the recorders of reality as they saw it. So Plato (Leonardo da Vinci's portrait), Socrates, and Pythagoras are all on the left side and Aristotle, Euclid (portrait of Bramante) and Diogenes, as
well as Raphael himself, are all on the right side of the space.
Both sets of groups are walking in a building that represents the two philosophies at once, the IDEA of a perfect architectural structure and the REALITY of what might have been, up to the date of the painting, partially built by Bramante on the site of St. Peter's. Because it might be problematic to imagine these pagan men walking in a Christian structure like the new St. Peter's, however, Raphael inserts into the niches of the building, statues of ancient deities, on the left, APOLLO, the god of perfect poetry and music, and on the right, MINERVA (Athena), the goddess of realistic wisdom. With those statues he tries to turn the building into a classical temple:
Apollo holds a lyre and looks away from the scene; he is naked and appears unprotected and vulnerable, while Athena, ever wise to reality, stands with spear, helmet, and shield.
As a side note, the face of Medusa on
Athena's shield, screams to ward off enemies, the ultimate buffer for vulnerability.
Raphael had tried out her face at the lower right page of the same preparatory drawing in which he sets up another figure in the School of Athens, Alexander the Great (seen from behind) reacting to Diogenes (see my blog entry on them):
Realistic behavior expects attack, defends the self, protects with armor, and is the opposite of Apollo's honest openness. Athena's extreme weapon is the head of a woman with snakes for hair who turns all she looks upon to stone. Though Medusa looks angrier in the drawing than in the finished painting, Raphael understood her purpose in the niche statue's presentation and perhaps was afraid she might overpower the whole, as she does the drawing sheet on which he imagines her, so the tone of the finished painting is somewhat more subdued.
While we're examining specific sections of the building, we should talk about the two figures represented in the ROUNDELS above and behind the main characters
At first glance they resemble an Annunciation scene, with the Angel Gabriel on the left and the Virgin Mary on the right. But, in closer viewing, the figure on the left wears a cloak and looks up to the heavens, the figure on the right holds an orb of the earth, so they probably represent the same two divisions on either side of the vertical in the scene, the wish for the IDEAL life on the left, the holding (literally) to the earthly REALISTIC view on the right.
The male figure looking up on the left holds an animal skin from which spews air; he is AEOLUS, GOD OF THE WINDS. (In the Odyssey he offers Odysseus an ox-skin bag filled with the four winds.) His cloak seems to move in the air behind him. As an air god he is perfect for the left side of the building, where the IDEALISTS, the ones who believe in perfection, are standing. The right female figure holds an orb on her knee; she is probably GAEA, goddess of the EARTH, perfect for the right side of the painting, where the REALISTS stand.
The imaginary building that holds these figures suspended in roundels, that presents ancient statues of ancient gods in niches, has certainly other features that connect it to ANCIENT ROME.
THE COFFERED BARREL VAULTS
The enormous rounded arch over the central figures of Plato and Aristotle is repeated in the enormous rounded arch with coffers behind them, as well as an arch in the far distance.
Where might Raphael have seen double barrel vaults with similar intricate coffered decoration? In ROME, in the FORUM, in the enormous coffered barrel vaults in the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius (c. 312 A.D.):
The coffered vaults of the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius are even taller in relation to human occupants than the vaults painted by Raphael in his fresco.
It is true that the vaults in the Basilica are side by side rather than one after another as in Raphael's painting, but for a building meant to house ancient and contemporary thinkers, the ancient law court and meeting house of Constantine and Maxentius makes an excellent source of inspiration. And the coffer design in the painting is almost identical to that in the real Roman ruin.
But, of course, Bramante, and probably his pupil, Raphael, had examined the ancient Roman buildings in order to understand how those structures were constructed. And when Bramante is given the task of tearing down the Old St. Peter's church in Rome and building a new, more glorious church, he probably looked to the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius for the vaults of his nave. At least, the new St. Peter's, as viewers see it today, has enormous coffered barrel vaults that leap over the heads of visitors as they proceed down the nave:
And while the coffers are not exactly like those of the ancient Roman Basilica, the echo of one barrel vault after another occurs because of the repetition of barrel vaults in the ancient building.
THREE WINDOWS WITH ROUNDED ARCHES
Raphael also looked at the trio of windows in the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius when imagining the three windows in the dome drum of his School of Athens building:
ARCHES WITH HORIZONTAL ARCHITRAVE ABOVE THEM
And the lowest arch on his painted wall resembles the arches with architrave above in the ground level of the Basilica. So the derivation from the ancient Roman building can be established, but what about the relation of his imagined architecture to the building of the new St. Peter's being planned by Bramante while Raphael is working on the School of Athens? How much of the new St. Peter's had even been built by 1509-11? What visual evidence is there? The only extant drawings for the building are a partial plan by Bramante of around 1506 in the Uffizi
and an angled drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi (no date, but he died in 1536) of the nave and crossing piers:
We have some idea of what Old St. Peter's (4th cent. A.D. structure) looked like from a fresco in the Vatican Grotte (no barrel vaults here):
We have some indication of how the site looked in 1536 when Martin Van Heemskerck made a drawing (now in Berlin):
These high vaults are coffered and repeat, but have been left unfinished because of the Sack of Rome in 1527. Are these 1536 vaults ones that Bramante himself designed and built? or do they get constructed during Raphael's tenure as director of St. Peter's construction since Bramante names Raphael as his successor before dying in 1514? Or are these vaults conceived and built after Raphael's own death in 1520 and planned an executed by someone else like Antonio da San Gallo,
also an apprentice to Bramante and who lives to 1546? Since the Heemskerck drawing is from 1536, it is impossible to know how early on these vaults were erected.
In another Flemish drawing made of St. Peter's in the 1560's of the front of St. Peter's Basilica with various towers now in the Courtauld Institute in London we sense the crowded area in front of the atrium of the old church and the barrel vaults perhaps at the back end of the building:
and then there is this view of it sometime after Michelangelo's death in 1564:
Here is a reconstruction of the Old St. Peter's design of 312 A.D. on the left, and the parts 1-4 outlined in the 1577 print for the new building by the Frenchman Etienne Duperac on the right have not changed much except for the construction of the dome and the supports for that at 1.
It is hard to see if any nave vaults were built or if the vaults we think were Bramante's were in the crossing by that point at all.
The dome isn't finished until 1596 by Giacomo della Porta, as we see in this 1603 drawing before Bernini changed the piazza, as on the right.
So how does this relate to Raphael's SCHOOL OF ATHENS? What these drawings and prints suggest is that the building of Bramante's new church was not much advanced when he died in 1514, which might explain why the architect is known during his lifetime as "Bramante Rovinante," (Bramante the Ruiner,) a nickname that even Michelangelo used for him. Michelangelo was painting in the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512, exactly during the time when Bramante would have been tearing down the back end of Old St. Peter's. You can see in the aerial view how close the Sistine is to the Basilica, and it is not hard to imagine Michelangelo's anger at Bramante's deadening noise next door emerging in his appellation for Bramante since Michelangelo would have been trying to paint the Sistine Ceiling during all the tearing down. Hard to concentrate while hammering is the surround-sound.
But back to Raphael. It seems unlikely that he had coffered barrel vaults begun by Bramante for the new church of St. Peter's to use as models for his Temple architecture in his SCHOOL OF ATHENS. The coffered barrel vaults that appear now in the interior of St. Peter's
that perhaps the argument should be reversed. Perhaps Raphael's imaginary construction of an ancient meeting place in 1509-11
became the model for the eventual construction of the nave ceilings and crossing drum, complete with spandrels (which, in New St. Peter's, contain images of Evangelists):
Bramante and Raphael were from Urbino and were related by family. It is Bramante who calls Raphael down to Rome for work, and he was a mentor to the younger artist. Bramante is put in charge of the rebuilding of St. Peter's in 1503, but when Raphael arrives in 1508 in Rome to work on the Stanze, they would have discussed architectural and fresco plans. Even if Bramante's drawings no longer exist, they could have provided ideas for Raphael's School architecture, but without proof of those, we may also assume that Raphael himself had his own ideas about how the vaults for St. Peter's should be constructed.
If Raphael is the original architect of his double vaults, he is also the originator of the double engaged (attached) pilasters on the side walls of his temple in the School of Athens. Did these colossal engaged pilasters in the painting give Michelangelo the idea for the double pilasters he uses to decorate the back end of the Basilica of St. Peter's (an area entirely designed and executed by Michelangelo) once he is placed in charge of New St. Peter's in 1546?
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Since Michelangelo is responsible for the piers, drum and dome, as well as the back end of the church, perhaps Raphael's flattery of him in placing him in the very front of his painting of the School of Athens,
may have paid off in the finished St. Peter's. Michelangelo's own colossal engaged pilasters echo those imagined in the ancient school view.
Also if Michelangelo designed the spandrels in the New Saint Peter's, he could have been influenced by the spandrels from the ancient pagan building painted by Raphael.
His dome is still inspiring visitors to St. Peter's today with its majesty. It surpasses anything the ancients could have ever thought of, REALISTS OR IDEALISTS alike. Raphael's School of Athens is a painting about a school of ideas,
and it becomes a school of architectural ideas for an even greater architect, the one who is front and center in the painting, whose colossal figure overwhelms all the other thinkers in the painting,
a man whose idealistic vision lifts everyone to new heights:
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