School of Athens at Our House

Steve cooked t-bone steaks tonight. The kind that I would expect to have at a restaurant about once every three years. 

They were utterly delicious. 

When the meal was over, Rebecca and I played a game of Splendor with Duncan, a joy to her for this was the first time she has won the game in a whole year. I am used to losing with Michael, and so the idea of winning doesn’t even enter my mind. Nobody is more surprised than me when I win.

Raphael's School of Athens

That should have been enough fun, but before any of the three of us were allowed to leave the table, all had to identify something about the images that people Raphael’s "School of Athens", which is up on the doors between the living room and the great room.

That was Rebecca’s rule for the night.

Impossible to get from one room to the other without passing by the print.

Last night Rebecca had identified her two boys as the main subjects of the painting: Aristotle and Plato, one thinking about the ethereal and the other grounded in the physical world. That made me laugh, of course, the two boys being likened to the great student and the great teacher philosophers.

I was curious about the rest of the figures in the painting.

I can remember being in the Vatican on a tour, and stopping in the room where this fresco is exhibited. At that time I was wishing that I knew my philosophers a little better, for I can’t tell one from another, nor the objects close to them that should help me identify them.

Before I had voiced that wish, Rebecca had found a 10 minute video that told the identified many in the print, so she and I were hunched over the table, listening to stories of Euclid and Pythagoras and Diogenes, and laughing so hard inside – two women sucking up knowledge for who knows what reason.

The end of a wonderful evening.

Well, every evening is a wonderful evening.

Arta