Focus on The School of Athens and analyze the Drawings and cartoon.
A number of drawings made by Raphael as studies for the School of Athens are extant. A study for the Diogenes is in the Städel in Frankfurt while a study for the group around Pythagoras, in the lower left of the painting, is preserved in the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Several drawings, showing the two men talking while walking up the steps on the right and the Medusa on Athena's shield, the statue of Athena (Minerva) and three other statues, a study for the combat scene in the relief below Apollo and "Euclid" teaching his pupils are in the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
The cartoon for the painting is in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Missing from it is the architectural background, the figures of Heraclitus, Raphael, and Protogenes. The group of the philosophers in the left foreground strongly recall figures from Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi. Additionally, there are some engravings of the scene's sculptures by Marcantonio Raimondi; they may have been based on lost drawings by Raphael, as they do not match the fresco exactly.
Frankfurt Milan Raphael Euclid Diogenes Städel fresco Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology right Medusa University of Oxford cartoon Albertina Athena Ashmolean Museum Pinacoteca Ambrosiana Apollo Adoration of the Magi Minerva Marcantonio Raimondi Protogenes Heraclitus Pythagoras Vienna