Reading an essay from 1941 and decrying it to be revolutionary is perhaps not what current academic trends and gatekeepers have in mind when they proclaim the ‘cutting edge’ of art history, its avant-garde, to be prescient and essential. Gutman’s essay ¹ is remarkable — and shows how far a good idea, one that can stake claim to the truth of Raphael’s famous fresco cycle in the Stanza della Segnatura in the New Papal Apartments, is in fact outside the bounds of time.

Gutman starts by pointing out that the ‘School of Athens’ is nowadays — both in his day and ours — seen in comparison with the Disputation of the Sacrament, the fresco that is conventionally said to symbolise ‘faith’ that faces the School of Athens. The false dichotomy that is set up between the two almost always leads to identifications of both the Catholic Church and the Renaissance as respectively the purveyor of and the period of superstition and myth, not in the least part influenced by the deliberate falsehoods of Dan Brown; the conclusion to this line of thought is always that the School of Athens is “a triumphant representation of worldly science and philosophy strictly separated from theology,” and this is what Gutman seeks to correct for the record. It seems as thought Gutman’s efforts were in vain, for even today, the majority of students of the history of art — not to mention the mob of popular cultural run amok — has resulted in this view being widespread, and unfortunately so.

Gutman points out that in his Lives, Giorgio Vasari mentions both works — the School of Athens and the Disputation. According to Vasari, Gutman posits, the fresco cycle together shows “theologians engaged in the reconciliation of Philosophy and Astrology with Theology.” If, as Gutman argues, Vasari was the only real contemporary of Raphael — and using the word ‘contemporary’ here he acknowledges the semantic stretch he must make — and Vasari’s account is the only account of the works from this time available to us as a primary source, why did others so readily abandon his iconographic interpretation? To this I must add that even though Vasari sinned — and sinned extensively in his history, committing a laundry list of sins, from omission to gossip-mongering to virtually deifying Michelangelo and to a certain extent Raphael and da Vinci — the charge of iconographic misrepresentation is by far the most debased allegation that can be made against the man who is arguably the founder of the history of art. To see Gutman rise to Vasari’s defence is heartening, for he is defending Vasari against an onslaught of undeserving criticism and cynicism from other historians of art.

Vasari, in his Lives, points out that theological figures are present in the fresco we now call ‘The School of Athens. For instance, St Matthew the Evangelist holds a book, sitting on the first step of the extreme left hand side of the floor. Gutman trots out Nicholas de Cusa, the famous Quattrocento theologian, to assist in a more accurate examination of the significance of the Pythagorean table, postulating — with more than a steady foundation — that “the mathematical scheme of the holy tetractys indicated nothing less than the light of the light of the higher reason of theology in contrast with the lower reason of science and philosophy,” and that theology was represented by the text on the Pythagorean tablet, that read: “1+2+3+4=10.” Cusanus’ argument — and theological precepts — were immensely powerful during this time, and as a cardinal he occupied a significant position in the church hierarchy. His influence was heightened by his engineering and management of the council that finally ended the Great Schism of 1054.

Gutman’s argument here is that iconographically, “Raphael’s follows exactly the doctrines of medieval Franciscan philosophy.” While the Dominicans, under the leadership of St Thomas Aquinas, had dominated medieval theology and reintroduced Aristotle to it, the Franciscans were staunch Neoplatonists which they inherited from their study of the writings of Augustine of Hippo, and were represented in this by their own 13th century medieval theologian — St Bonaventure. It is, Gutman argues, through the influence of the Franciscans, that the conventional roles assigned by medieval scholasticism was swapped: it is Plato, not Aristotle, represented with the use of the learned man typology. Platonist attacks on Aristotle during the Quattrocento pushed Aristotle off his preeminent position as the philosophic guide for theologians, which is why Plato here is shown as the learned old man while Aristotle is brilliant and shining with youthful exuberance. While Plato’s half of the fresco focuses on speculative reason — including theology — Aristotle’s half of the fresco focuses on the natural sciences, for even though the Platonists could attack Aristotelian philosophical precepts they could not mount an attack upon his pre-eminence in the natural sciences.

One may ask — and ask rightly so — why one should pay any heed to Gutman’s argument. Gutman points out that the frescos were commissioned and executed under the watchful eyes of Pope Julius II, ad praescriptum Julii Pontificis. Pope Julius II started off his career in the Franciscan order, and while he was the nepoti — the Papal nephew — his uncle was Pope Sixtus IV, a renowned Franciscan theologian and general of the order. Surely, this would not be speculative: such a view of the world, of learning, and of the division of disciplines would be iconographically prescribed for the papal apartments Julius II had commissioned for himself and then decorated according to his tastes. It is sound grounds for believing that at the very least, we should pay heed to Vasari, and by immersing us in the world of late medieval and early modern theology and philosophy, Gutman provides strong credence to Vasari’s iconographic schema.