School of Athens: The “hidden” faces and the secret self-portrait in Raphael’s fresco

Those who have been in the Peristyle of the Parliament in recent months had the unique opportunity to admire up close the “School of Athens”, one of the most famous frescoes by the Renaissance artist Raphael, which was lent to Greece by France in the form of a tapestry and will now be return to the French National Assembly.

The fresco was done by Raphael between 1510 and 1511 and in it the famous Renaissance artist took care to include a “hidden” self-portrait of himself: his figure emerges very subtly behind the right arch, it is the dark head behind the figure of Zoroaster .

Instead, he has depicted very clearly and in central parts of the painting Leonardo da Vinci as Plato (in the center of the painting with the red chlamys) conversing with Aristotle.

Also shown is the figure of Michelangelo, as a thinking Heraclitus, in the foreground and center left of the painting, resting on a pedestal.

“Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Aeschines, all the ancient sages face the plenary session of the Parliament as they also face the plenary session of the French National Assembly, wanting in this symbolic way, to achieve a transfusion of an unrepeatable spirit in the modern juncture”, noted the President of the Parliament, thanking both the President of the French National Assembly and the French Ambassador to Greece, Patrick Mezonav, for the grant of the tapestry, in the context of the Exhibition of the Parliament of the Greeks for the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution.

Raphael’s original masterpiece, with all the philosophers of ancient Greece, is in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican and adorns a wall in the Hall of Signatures.

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