Skolen i Athen (italienskScuola di Atene) er en fresko i rummet Stanza della Segnatura i Vatikanpaladset i Rom. Freskoen er et af de mest kendte værker af renæssancemalerenRafael, som også malede de tre andre freskoer i det samme rum. Rafael udførte freskoen fra 1509 til 1511 og motivet viser mange af antikkens mest kendte græske filosofer.
Stanza della Segnatura var det første i en række rum, som Rafael blev bestilt til at dekorere, og Skolen i Athen, som repræsenterer filosofi, var sandsynligvis det tredje af malerierne i dette rum, som han færdiggjorde, efter La Disputa (teologi) på den modsatte væg og Parnassus (litteratur). Skolen i Athen er længe blevet set som "Rafaels mesterværk og det perfekte billede på den klassiske ånd i renæssancen".
Personer
En komplet liste over de afbildede personer er givet nedenfor:
Navne i parentes er samtidige person, som man mener Rafael har trukket på ligheder fra.
12Raphael has reused the motif of two women from his earlier work the Vision of a Knight (see Chefs d'oeuvre de l'art: grands peintres N° 31: Raphaël (en deux parties), Hachette, 1966, p. 215).
↑Jürg Meyer zur Capellen, however, qualifies the certainty of this identification writing "eine Gruppe von Lesenden und Disputierenden, die um eine Sitzfigur, vielleicht Pythagoras, angeordnet ist." ("a group of people reading and debating, arranged around a seated figure, perhaps Pythagoras."). Jürg Meyer zur Capellen: Raffael (Munich: Beck 2010), p. 49.
123Daniel Orth Bell, "New Identifications in Raphael's School of Athens", The Art Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), p. 641: "the military figure is probably Pericles ... Many philosophers are mentioned as his teachers, but foremost among them was the philosopher-astronomer Anaxagoras ... Returning to the center of the composition, we notice a figure who lies at the feet of Plato and Aristotle in quiet isolation; here, I propose, is Socrates".
↑The interpretation of this figure as Hypatia seems to have originated from the Internet. Serious sources do not mention it at all. H. J. Mozans (=John Augustine Zahm specifically regrets that Hypatia does not appear in the painting in his book Women in Science (1913), p. 141.
↑Raphael's lover Fornarina is portrayed in a famous painting in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome. This identification has been introduced on 2002 by Matteo Smolizza during his cooperation with Lorenza Mochi Onori, former Director of the Museum, in the occasion of the Exhibit La Fornarina di Raffaello, Milan, Fondazione Arte e Civiltà, March 14 – June 2, 2002. It was later investigated on the basis of 1) position of the portrait (specular to Raphael's one); 2) appearance compared with contemporary Raphael's drawings; 3) strictly contemporary texts by Raphael to the woman; 4) fresco's general meaning. Cf. Smolizza, pp. 68–74.[fuld kildeangivelse nødvendig]