In this painting, located in the Vatican Apartments, Plato (the older bearded man near the very center, shown gesturing upwards) walks with his younger student, Aristotle (who motions downward, suggesting how his philosophical approach would come to differ from his master’s). In the foreground, Michelangelo sits looking downward, resting his head on his fist. Over toward the right border of the painting, the very young Raphael himself, wearing a black, beret-like hat, looks directly at the viewer. (Wikimedia Commons public domain)
If this claim is true, it’s a pretty exciting discovery. There is, simply, no bigger name in antiquity than that of Aristotle. In certain ways, even people like Augustus Caesar don’t compare.
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