Part II

If I had to show through images Vitruvius’ understanding of beauty as both true mathematical symmetry and the appearance of such symmetry, I would choose Raphael’s fresco the School of Athens in his Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Raphael (1483–1520) portrays Plato and Aristotle equal in height and standing side by side. Plato is holding a copy of his work on cosmology, the Timaeus, and is pointing up to the heavens. Aristotle holds a copy of his Nichomachean Ethics and points down to the earth. Raphael’s pairing of Aristotle and Plato as equals is the culmination of centuries of discussion in Western Christianity concerning the differences between the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. “And so it appears,” St. Bonaventure (1221–74) observed, “that, of the philosophers, it was given to Plato to speak of wisdom, to Aristotle of science. The former looked mainly toward the higher things, the latter mainly toward the lower.”¹ According to Raphael’s contemporary Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), “Plato deals with natural things divinely, while Aristotle treats divine things naturally.”² These remarks concern Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies in general, not their particular orientations toward transcendental as opposed to aesthetic beauty. Nor is there any reason to believe that, in portraying Plato and Aristotle as equals, Raphael had our specific question of beauty in mind, or even that Vitruvius was thinking of Plato and Aristotle as he was defining symmetry and eurhythmy. My use of Raphael’s School of Athens is directed to those who may have trouble understanding how, for Vitruvius, a material form, such as a symmetrical colonnade, can be linked to the cosmos. Raphael’s pairing of Plato and Aristotle, with Plato pointing to the heavens and Aristotle to the earth, can be a powerful pedagogical visualization of a theory of beauty that seeks to link the visible to the invisible, the individual sensuous form to a transcendent truth. But Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura does more than provide an attractive teaching tool. It enacts an understanding of beauty very similar to Vitruvius’.