Reading Raphael: The school of Athens and its pre-text.

'Discusses R's fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura (Rome, Vatican). Remarks on the novelty of representing Philosophy with philosophers rather than an allegorical figure. Suggests that the painting is based on Plato's Protagoras. Among other details, Plato's text and Raphael's painting share a fundamental division of the philosophers into three thematic groups. Looks at the possibility that the program may have been devised by Giles of Viterbo, court theologian to Julius II. Raphael's painted setting may have been based on the ancient Janus Quadrifrons (Rome), a reference to Janus, the founder of philosophy according to Giles and other Etruscan revivalists' (BHA).