The difference between Raphael de Sanzio and Andrea di Bonaiuto in their artistic treatments of the fundamental differences between Plato and Aristotle is a matter of great importance for the epistemology of axiomatics, because it is timeless. Raphael explicitly represented the two philosophers in his painting, The School of Athens, as two opposite figures, one pointing upward to the domain of ideas and the other pointing downward to the domain of the senses. Almost a hundred and fifty years before, Andrea di Bonaiuto painted three frescos representing the same difference through a process of axiomatic transformation from one to the other in his masterful composition of the Spanish Chapel, in Florence.
ANDREA DI BONAIUTO, THOMAS AQUINAS, AND THE UNITY OF OPPOSITES
