On the opposite wall, in the School of Athens, Figure [188], Raphael pictures a similar continuity of human thought on the secular plane. The arched space opens into a vast basilica whose gods, represented as colossal statues at the sides, are Apollo and Minerva. Raphael has studied the Basilica of Constantine and has modestly scanned Bramante’s plans for new St. Peter’s. He invents a vaulted interior more impressive than any that man has ever built. Within finite bounds he suggests the infinity of Umbrian space. Without the figures, or with quite other figures, we should still have a great picture. But the group is as nobly disposed as the architecture. You may imagine a foreshortened ring of which the reverend forms of Plato and Aristotle are the twin jewels. Aristotle at the right is in the vigor of middle age as a scientist should be. His disciples crowd towards him or gather in secondary groups about some leader. Science is social and co-operative. Raphael puts himself in this group. Plato at the left is immensely old and feeble. Speculative philosophy requires only strength of spirit. His disciples are generally isolated in personal meditation. Philosophical truth is arrived at not in society but in solitude. Certain ardent young faces recall Leonardo da Vinci, and the construction of the group is his. We have linking motives, like that of sprawling Diogenes on the steps, curves that repeat or counter the vault above, turns and thrusts of bodies in active balance, an energetic variety within a serene harmony. The mood is less agitated than that of the Disputa, while the composition is freer. Human science and philosophy are at once less bound than is theology, and move more equably because they strive for more readily attainable ends. Like its companion piece, the School of Athens is both a citation of witnesses and a profession of faith, of faith in the capacity of the human mind.
The fresco of Parnassus repeats approximately the grouping of the School of Athens, but changes the mood to one of lyrism, and shifts the scene to a hill top. About Apollo and the Muses wander the forms of the elder and recent poets. Often the faces are a bit insipid, but no one thinks of that, so easy are the postures, so gracious the whole effect, so instinct with the quiet good breeding of an academic pastoral. All the Umbrian reticence and discretion and humility of Raphael are in this beautifully calculated work. It betrays, too, certain ominous symptoms of display, in the way, for example, in which the figures at the window protrude beyond the wall. Primarily this is only a way of softening two ugly angles of the window opening, but it is also a concession to Michelangelo’s dangerous habit of painting away the architecture. All the forms have an amplitude and dignity akin to that of classical sculpture. Hellas is for Raphael no longer a far-away, inaccessible world, as it was, for example, to Botticelli. Raphael has effectively reconstructed it, in part by a gracious act of intuition, in part by study of the wall paintings and statues of old Rome.
Fig. 189. Raphael. Prudence, Temperance, Force—generally called Jurisprudence. Fresco.—Vatican.
The decoration of the Camera della Segnatura was completed triumphantly with the fresco symbolizing Jurisprudence, Figure [189], in which Raphael invents a new and beautiful compositional formula. Having to deal with a lunette awkwardly shortened by the window, he used three seated figures signifying the judging, restraining and rewarding aspects of justice. There is no strict centrality and no exact symmetry. The large curves of the figures play off from each other in a continuous rhythm melting into the bounding curve. One may conceive it in terms of the growth of plants, as so many sprays meeting, diverging, opposing each other, and all managing to conform to the line of an arch. It is a type of composition that Raphael will develop with still greater subtlety in the Sibyls of the Madonna della Pace.
When Raphael finished the Camera della Segnatura he was about twenty-eight years old. His remaining nine years added certain remarkable portraits, the Castiglione, the Leo X, Figure [190], the Fornarina and the young Cardinal at Madrid, one sublime altar-piece, in the Sistine Madonna; a dramatic masterpiece in the Transfiguration, and a few frescoes. But in the main these are years of retrogression. His popularity had got beyond his power to utilize it. Michelangelo in 1512 had unveiled the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael, with all Rome, felt qualities of energy and grandeur which he himself lacked, and, with less than his usual intelligence, began a fruitless emulation. The last three Stanze show in their very look that Raphael is no longer his unperturbed self. The figures no longer hold up their place on the wall, they crowd out toward the spectator appallingly. The compositions no longer show restful patterns which conform to the flatness of the wall. There are disturbing flashes of light and obscure gaps. The figures themselves are contorted and vehement; straining sinews and knotted muscles are advertised for their own sake. Emulating the sublimity of Michelangelo, Raphael only achieves sensationalism. Then he is no longer a painter but a director of painting. Nothing but the designs are now his own. The working sketches and cartoons are by his pupils, who work under the sway of a young Mantuan of facile and brutal talent, Giulio Romano. One passes through the last three Stanze with mixed feelings. The high pleasures of art are left behind; remains the spell of great power and intelligence now almost untouched by taste.
Fig. 190. Raphael. Pope Leo X.—Pitti.
Fig. 191. Raphael. Heliodorus driven from the Temple by a Celestial Horseman. Fresco.—Vatican.