Raphael's School of Athens and What Can We Know?
Raphael’s famous fresco, The School of Athens (1510-1511), painted when Raphael was 27 years old, casts as its central characters Plato (left) and Aristotle (right). Raphael’s fresco illustrates the impact of rediscovered Greek and Latin classics in shaping the humanistic thought that was so integral to Renaissance thought. Raphael aimed to indicate that Renaissance thinkers matched the ancients and his own artistic genius, along with that of such greats as Leonardo da Vinci