School of Athens

If I could be part of the painting The school of Athens I would like to be Diogenes because of his teachings about how to live life. He taught people how to use self-control and to pursue virtue though simple living. His teaching is similar to the Buddhist teaching which is my religion. We believe in taking the middle path in achieving self-control, virtuous lifestyle and simple living. The middle path is the way of living with enough worldly things but not too much and not too little. A good example of not living the middle path would be if you gave most of your money away to help others and suffered yourself as a result. This would be wrong and considered a sin in Buddhism. It would also be the same as buying everything you wanted and not content with what you had. This would also be a sin.

How Art Mirror Society

You can see many things in art. You can see architecture, important events, the artists, mood/feelings and society itself. All of this would be from the artist’s perspective. What he sees, thinks and feels. Artists from tribes use art to show us their culture and festivals. Artists from the Renaissance painted the architecture that they saw which was the Roman architecture being recreated again. In time of war the paintings reflect the artist feelings and thoughts about the event that is going on. Through the eyes of the artist their paintings show society as they interpreted it. The painting 'The School of Athens' shows us all the great thinkers from different time periods in one room. On the left there are the great thinkers that believe in the spiritual world represent by Plato who is pointing up. They are the mathematicians and church officials. There believe in the hereafter. What matters is how we live on earth so we can go back to our gods when we die. The other group, which is represented by Aristotle, believes in the secular or non-religious world. This included science and astronomy. They believe in the tangible world around us. What you can see. The afterlife was not important to them. Raphael also chose to show the Roman architecture in his painting, which also reflected both groups in the designs. We could tell it Roman architecture because it has rounded arch and the column has stature to decorate them. Raphael’s art was a mirror of the society at that time. It gives us a picture of what was important and valued in the higher Renaissance.