School of Athens
Vanishing Point
This fresco in the Vatican depicts most of the great thinkers of Greek antiquity, against a vast noble architecture backdrop presented in perfect perspective. In this image a set of straight lines in three colors has been added to show the vanishing point on the horizon line, on which the blue and the red and the orange lines all converge. The vanishing point doesn’t point to any figure in the painting; it points to a place right between the two most important thinkers in the picture, Plato and Aristotle. The two top red perspective lines follow the architecture of the great space, a perfectly symmetrical temple. The 21 thinkers all have expressive postures, and against the architectural backdrop they resemble dancers occupying the space of the stage against some painting of a classical building. It is like a ballet with 21 principals on stage and no corps de ballet.
