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About This Work
This print isolates and numbers the heads of key participants in Raphael's famous mural to facilitate their identification. Below the sketches, a detailed Latin legend provides names for each figure, including central philosophers like Plato and Aristotle alongside peripheral figures like Averroes and Zoroaster. The layout serves as a schematic guide to the complex intellectual program of the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura.
This work documents the Renaissance 'Prisca Theologia' or 'perennial philosophy,' which sought to reconcile classical Greek thought with Islamic, Persian, and contemporary Italian figures. It highlights the specific inclusion of esoteric and mathematical thinkers like Pythagoras and Zoroaster within the canonical history of Western philosophy.