Raphael And The Renaissance

Today, art is often overlooked and considered a joke by most people, but between the 14th and 17th Century, which is more commonly known as the Renaissance, art, and their artists, flourished. One such popular artist went by the name of Raphael. Raphael was born on April 6, 1483 in Urbino, Italy and died in Rome April 6, 1520 at the age of thirty-seven. During his time, Raphael had done many things; he was most famous for his Madonna’s and his large figure work of art in the Palace of the Vatican in Rome. When Raphael was twenty-one, he left his apprenticeship and headed to Florence, where he was influenced by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, whom he thought had achieved whole new levels of depth in their composition. He studied …show more content…
The people in the fresco have all gathered to gain knowledge, and through this knowledge that they gain, they better themselves and make their lives, and even the lives of others, easier. The Roman Empire adopted its humanist view from Ancient Greece, and importance was based on the needs of people, and the practical, looking for an explanation concerning natural events and other things, and this was not only confined to philosophers. Unlike in the Renaissance, the Romans were more concerned about the physical and less about the mystical; the gods could only do so much, the rest was up to you. The School of Athens could’ve been an example of people getting together to discuss science and politics and the roles that they played in their world. These philosophers and their students was probably what Raphael considered very common back in the days of the Empire. All of the people featured in the School of Athens represented humanism, and individualism, these were the people that were looked up to by those in the Renaissance, the people that they used as an example as they moved towards focus on the individual and