Raphael, The School of Athens, Vatican Museums (1) (48759097357)

Plato gestures toward the heavens while holding his dialogue Timaeus, while Aristotle gestures toward the earth with a volume of his Ethics. They walk through a grand archway flanked by students and other thinkers, including the reclining figure of Diogenes on the steps below them. The scene captures a moment of balanced intellectual debate between the idealist and the empiricist traditions.

This work is the definitive visual representation of the Renaissance synthesis of classical philosophy. Plato's Timaeus, shown here, was the most influential text for Neoplatonic cosmology and Renaissance natural philosophy, describing the mathematical harmony of the universe.