Italian Renaissance Master Raphael: The School Of Athens

In the early 1500’s Italian Renaissance Master Raphael was commissioned to paint Pope Julius II Papal Apartments. He frescoed murals in four separate rooms, but one of his designs is especially significant. In the room that housed Julius’s library, Raphael painted four distinct frescoes that each upholds an Antique or Christian value of knowledge/art. The most famous mural, The School of Athens, highlights the importance of rational thought and free, progressive thinking. Many artists including Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael himself are included. The fresco on the adjacent wall is entitled Parnassus. This mural displays the Greek God Apollo in his outdoor dwelling place. Apollo was the god of music and poetry, and he is triumphantly in the center of the composition playing an instrument while singing. While these frescoes show ideals that were important in the Antique and Renaissance eras, they also uphold the idea of the arts being so disjointed and classified separately. If a muralist were working today, they would probably want to show different arts and sciences together in harmony. This manner of thinking was championed by Modernist poet William Carlos Williams in the early part of the early 20th century. …show more content…
He attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he met his lifelong friend and colleague Charles Demuth. Demuth attended Drexel University and the pair met at Mrs. Chain’s boarding house in 1903. Williams recollected, “At that table I met one of my dearest friends. Will you have some bread? Yes. That look. It was enough. Youth is so rich. It needs no stage setting” (Breslin, 249). He vaguely yet succinctly relates their fortuitous meeting. This anecdote is actually quite romantic and little cliché. With a look they both knew they would become the best of friends. Clichés aside, the two did remain lifelong confidants and