The High Renaissance is widely viewed as the greatest explosion of creative genius in history. High Renaissance is the time when most of the principles of art were perfected and practiced with utmost mastery. The High Renaissance, in the history of art, denotes the culmination of the art of the Italian Renaissance and is generally held to have emerged in the late 1490s, when Leonardo da Vinci executed his Last Supper in Milan. The paintings in the Vatican by Michelangelo and Raphael represent the culmination of the style in painting. The ideal balance between static and movement, as exemplified by Michelangelo’s Pietà and David, characterizes high Renaissance sculpture.

There is no better example than ‘School of Athens’ by Raphael, which illustrates the brilliance of High Renaissance artists and brings forth the importance of principles of art.

The ‘School of Athens’, (Image above)  or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings Raphael painted at the age of 25. It was painted as a part of his commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Fresco means painting on wet plaster. This makes the paint fuse with the plaster to create a more durable painting. This technique is very tricky because the artist has to decide how much he can paint in a day and only plaster that part. The ‘School of Athens’ has long been seen as Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance.

The School of Athens uses a pyramidal composition, which is very characteristic of Raphael and the High Renaissance. In this fresco Raphael created an ideal world, peopled with figures of superhuman nobility and grace, who are arranged in perfectly balanced composition and linked to one another by a complex play of glances and gestures. All characters in the ‘School of Athens’ are doing something. This indicts a great sense of motion, which is visible in the poses of the figures.

The painting shows the most famous philosophers of ancient times move within an imposing Renaissance architecture. The composition is a study in perspective and balance resulting in hinting the viewer, the importance of people depicted in the painting. In the center of the fresco, at its architecture's central vanishing point, (See image above) are the two undisputed main subjects: Plato on the left and Aristotle, his student, on the right (See image below). Both figures hold modern, bound copies of their books in their left hands, while gesturing with their right. Plato holds Timaeus, Aristotle his Nicomachean Ethics. Plato is depicted as old, grey, wise-looking, bare-foot. By contrast Aristotle, slightly ahead of him, is in mature manhood, handsome, well-shod and dressed with gold, and the youth about them seem to look his way. In addition, these two central figures gesture along different dimensions: Plato vertically, upward along the picture-plane, into the beautiful vault above; Aristotle on the horizontal plan at right-angles to the picture-plane (hence in strong foreshortening), initiating a powerful flow of space toward viewers. Their gestures may indicate central aspects of their philosophies: Plato motioning upward toward The Forms, Aristotle palm downward, possibly emphasizing the study of things on Earth.

Some of the other easily recognizable wise men are Pythagoras, shown in the foreground intent on explaining the diatesseron. Diogenes is lying on the stairs with a dish, while the pessimist philosopher, Heracleitus, a portrait of Michelangelo, is leaning against a block of marble, writing on a sheet of paper. Michelangelo was in those years executing the paintings on the ceiling in the nearby Sistine Chapel. On the right we see Euclid, who is teaching geometry to his pupils, Zoroaster holding the heavenly sphere and Ptolemy holding the earthly sphere. The personage on the extreme right, behind the pillar, with the black beret is a self-portrait of Raphael.

Raphael gives his figures mass, bulk and weight by using perspective, drapery, chiaroscuro (Italian for use of strong contrasts between light and dark), and controposto (Italian for "counterpoise". It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot). The way the clothing of the figures falls on their bodies gives them a sense of underlying body structure. Controposto, or weight shift, was reintroduced during the Renaissance and Raphael used this very effectively in the ‘School of Athens’. This gave his figures very realistic body poses. All the lines converging between Plato and Aristotle's heads gives it the pyramidal composition.