Title: Athens College
By Raphael
Year:1510 ~151/
Painting: mural painting
Size: 2.794X6. 172m
Introduction of works
The framework of Athens College is 2.794× 6.172m.
Location: St. Peter's Church in Rome, Vatican Palace.
The painting "Athens Academy" (1510 ~1511) is based on the Athens Academy built by Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, and takes seven ancient liberal arts, namely grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy. The artist tried to express his longing for a better future by recalling the "golden age" in history. Its theme is to worship the Greek spirit and pursue the highest ideal of life, which is the long-cherished wish of humanistic artists themselves. The whole painting is set in a tall building arch, and the hall is filled with famous scholars from different times, regions and schools, as well as former thinkers and contemporary celebrities. They are discussing freely, and their emotions are warm, as if they are holding a ceremony or celebrating a grand festival, filled with the atmosphere of a hundred schools of thought contending and condensing the essence of human wisdom. This building is obviously modeled after St Peter's Cathedral designed by bramante. In the niches on both sides, there are statues of Athena, the goddess of wisdom (right) and Apollo, the god of music (left). The arch in the center of the perspective point leads directly to the distant horizon, which is an extremely sacred environment. Scholars are symmetrically but rhythmically arranged on both sides of the steps, and the characters on the upper steps are lined up. In the middle are two great scholars-Plato and Aristotle. As they walked towards the audience, they seemed to be arguing fiercely. Aristotle stretched out his right hand, palm down, as if to explain: the real world is his research topic; On the other hand, Plato pointed his right hand upward, indicating that everything was inspired by the gods. These two opposing postures express their ideological differences in principle. The rest of the people, some staring at the moon, some watching, some listening to the conversation between the two old people, naturally formed several groups. Now let's introduce the people on the upper steps: beside Plato on the upper left, an old man with a beard is immersed in thinking. Socrates has just turned to explaining ethical arguments to others. The fifth person from left to right is a young soldier named Alsi Bydes. Behind him, a man is greeting two young people coming. At Aristotle's side at the top right, two young people are leaning against the base of the niche wall. One is writing, the other is thinking, and the other is standing alone. These three people are opposite to the group on the left. On the left side below the steps, centered on Pythagoras, a mathematician who is sitting on the ground and writing intently, a teenager is holding a' wooden sign' for him, which reads a "harmonious" number scale diagram. Behind him, an old man is recording the number of Pythagoras' arguments. The scholar behind him with a neck stretched out and a white scarf wrapped around his head is the Muslim scholar Aviloy. A little further behind, there is a man wearing a laurel crown and standing on the pedestal with his chest out. He is the master of grammar, Epicurus. The scholar standing in front of Pythagoras and pointing to the sentences in the book is the rhetorician Saint-Nock Leites. Among them, there is a blond young man in a white cloak. He has a delicate face and a grim expression. He is regarded as Francesco de la Roffe, the future archduke of Ullbin. In the group on the right under the steps, the central figure is the geometer Euclid (Archimedes). He bends down, holds a compass in his hand, and tells the students calculus on the blackboard, surrounded by his four students. These four people seem to have different understandings of the teacher's explanation. The man next to him, wearing an ancient yellow robe, wearing a crown of honor and holding astronomical instruments, is an Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy. Opposite Ptolemy, bramante, a fellow countryman of the painter Raphael (an old man with a beard), is the painter Sodoma on the edge, and the young man with half his head exposed and a dark round hat is the painter Raphael himself. Painting himself as a historical theme was the painter's favorite expression at that time, but Raphael left himself too little space. On the central step of this painting lies a lonely and cynical philosopher, diogenes. The scholar thinks that everything except natural needs, including social life and cultural life, is insignificant, so he usually wears rags and lives in a wooden box. This figure played a role in filling the gap in composition. He contacted two people walking on the steps on the right, and echoed Heraclitus, a scholar leaning on the stone table in the lower left corner. According to many scholars' research, Heraclitus' lonely image is considered to be the result of Raphael's reference to the image of the prophet St. Jeremiah in Michelangelo's Genesis mural. In fact, many images here, with strong physique and powerful movements, are related to Michelangelo's artistic image. More interestingly, Plato's head is modeled after Leonardo da Vinci's, which shows Raphael's reverence for these two great artists. The color treatment of this painting is also very harmonious. The architectural background is all ivory marble structure, and the costumes of the characters are interwoven with red, white, yellow, purple and ochre. The perspective method has a high level, which not only enhances the sense of space of the picture, but also makes the pattern of the ground and the geometric decoration structure of the vault accurate enough to be calculated mathematically.
Background description
1508, Raphael left Florence and went to Rome on the recommendation of bramante, an architect who was supervising the construction of St. Peter's Church at that time, and began to work for Pope Julius II. During the 10 years there, he painted a lot of murals for the Pope's palace, among which the four groups of murals in the Vatican Palace were the best (the total title was "Establishment and Consolidation of the Church Government", and the murals were divided into four rooms: the first room was painted with four paintings of "theology", "poetics", "philosophy" and "law"; The second room is about the power and honor of the church; The third room depicts the behavior of the late Pope Leo III and IV. The four murals in the fourth room were painted by students according to Raphael's draft, and the philosophy of the first room, also known as Athens College, is the most successful masterpiece of the four murals in this room. This huge mural (2.794× 6. 172m), with Plato and Aristotle as the center, painted more than 50 great scholars, which not only showed Raphael's portrait painting ability, but also played his spatial composition skills. He carefully thought about the strengths and personalities of each character, and the lineup was considerable, which only Michelangelo's zenith painting could match. Raphael was only 26 years old at that time.
Brief introduction of painter
Raffaello Santi
Nationality: Italy
Date of birth and death: 1483 ~ 1520.
Place of birth: Ullbin.
Super long: painting
Raphael is an outstanding Italian painter, and he is also known as the three outstanding artists in the Renaissance with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. His works learned from others, formed his own unique style, represented the most admired aesthetic taste at that time, and became a model that later classicists could not reach. His representative works include the oil painting The Sistine Madonna and the mural The Academy of Athens.
Raphael's father was a court painter, so he studied painting with his father since childhood. 1 1 When his father died, he worked as an assistant for a painter. Later, I studied the works of Florence artists in the15th century and began to embark on the road of originality.
Raphael devoted himself to studying the artistic characteristics of the masters of various painting schools and learned from others, especially Leonardo da Vinci's composition techniques and Michelangelo's physical expression and strong style. In the end, he formed a beautiful, round and soft style with unique classical spirit, and was called the three outstanding figures in the Renaissance art world together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Raphael created a large number of statues of the Virgin Mary, which showed his extraordinary genius. His series of portraits of the Virgin Mary all reflect the humanistic thought with maternal warmth and youthful bodybuilding. Among them, the most famous ones are The Wedding of the Virgin, The Virgin with an oriole, The Virgin on the Grass, The Virgin in the Garden, The Sistine Madonna, The Virgin of foligno, The Virgin on the Chair, The Virgin of Alba, etc.
The Wedding of the Virgin painted by Raphael at the age of 2/kloc-0 not only shows that he fully absorbed the artistic essence of perugino, but also came from behind and made innovations in composition and image-building. In particular, the balance of the picture, the description of the background and the dignity and elegance of the Virgin Mary are rare in previous painters' works.
The large-scale oil painting "The Sistine Madonna" is Raphael's most successful portrait of the Madonna, and it is a hymn of the Madonna written by him with pious feelings. The picture adopts a stable pyramid-shaped composition, the characters are similar in size to real people, solemn and balanced, and the background of the picture is all composed of the head of the little angel, which is novel and unique. The image of the Virgin Mary is soft and holy, which shows the happiness and greatness of maternal love.
In "The Virgin on the Little Chair", Raphael portrayed the image of the Virgin more humanized, and the dress of the Virgin was deeply influenced by exotic customs, colorful and full of oriental sentiment. The composition of the whole work is complete, which fully embodies Raphael's unparalleled painting skills.
Raphael's most famous mural was made by Athens College for the Vatican Palace. This giant mural brings together more than 50 famous philosophers and thinkers since ancient Greece, including Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and Pythagoras. In this way, we can praise the pursuit of wisdom and truth and the creativity of human beings.
In Athens College, Plato and Aristotle in the center of the picture, one pointing to the sky and the other pointing to the world in front of them, show their different philosophical views: Plato's idealism and Aristotle's materialism. With them as the center, some famous artists painted on both sides are lifelike and not chaotic at all.