Art can be a true mirror of society, as it includes important moments of our daily lives in the painting. How people interact with each other, and how people react to certain situations are clearly captured in an artwork, revealing the mood, time period and the setting of the painting. For instance, Rafael's most well known fresco, 'The School of Athens' contains key characteristics that made up the Renaissance, such as Science & Technology, Mathematics and Architecture. Although Rafael included creative thinkers of different generations under one roof, a precise picture of the society of the Renaissance can be drawn from this painting with Rafael's exceptional detail to people's clothing and also, architectural designs and decorations. Clearly, this fresco reveals that Roman architectural designs were used during the Renaissance, and that Togas were worn by majority of people. Additionally, objects in the background and people's emotions/actions also contribute to the fact that Art mirrors society. People's eagerness to learn captures the mood of the Renaissance, making it the Age of new ideas. Through these examples given above, Art can be concluded to be a reflection of society, as Art develops when the society develops.
If I were a part of this painting..
If I were to be a part of Raphael's masterpiece, 'The School of Athens', the best character that would reflect my personalities would be Heraclitus. Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek self-taught philosopher, who was frequently engaged in deep thinking. In the painting, Heraclitus appears to be lost in his own thoughts while writing his ideas on a piece of paper. He enjoyed questioning people's ideas and arguing with others to prove his idea right. Like Heraclitus, I too have a strength in sharing my ideas to other people and I also argue my way out. Being a curious person myself, I like to question things about how and why things work and also, i am deeply interested the world around me. These traits that I contain prove the likeliness between Heraclitus and myself.
