The Reading Images Project

Raphael's Setting

School of Athens and Jurisprudence

The south wall, to the right of the School of Athens,  is iconographically the most complex of the four in the Stanza della Segnatura.  Like Mount Parnassus, it is bisected by a window, but here the wall comprises three scenes, not just one.  Rather than a gathering of "practicioners" of Jurisprudence, this wall depicts virtues necessary for administering justice and two historical scenes of the establishment of law.   In the lunette at the top are female personifications of Fortitude, Prudence and Temperance, accompanied by putti, who perhaps represent the theological virtues.  Flanking the window to the left is Tribonianus Handing the Pandects to Justinian, i.e., the passage of Roman civil law to the Byzantine emperor, and hence to the medieval Christian world.  To the right of the window is Gregory IX Approves the Decretals, the establishement of canon law.  The two frescoes are linked by the placement of civil (i.e. human) law adjacent to the philosophers on the east wall and by the inclusion of a statue of  Minerva on the right side of  the School.

 West Wall                     North Wall                 East Wall

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