The Parnassus of Raphael is a painting with some hidden messages. Apollo in the center plays music with a modern musical instrument. Raphael knew what instruments were used by the ancient Greeks as the Lyre of Sappho shows but he decided Apollo to play a Lira da Braccio. The poets are not chronologically ordered. Homer, Virgil and Dante are close together even if they are separated by up to 2000 years. Maybe the message was that poetry (and music) is timeless.

Like in the School of Athens where the most important representative philosophers until the period of Raphael are shown the Parnassus shows the most emminent persons of Literature. The central figures are Apollo and his Muses and Homer. He recites his poems, probably singing and only one person, Ennius the youngest, actually seems to be interested. Dante behind Homer almost provocatively ignores what he says.

The central figures are Apollo and the Muses. The Muses are personifications of the Liberal Arts but more than that they represent the creative process, the inspiration necessary to be a good author and poet. Apollo is assosiated with the Muses and light and thus probably he represents the enlightment, the Rennaissance period. The Greeks are represented with Apollo and the Muses, Homer, Sappho, Alcaeus and Anacreon.

The Parnassus with The Disputa, The Cardinal Virtues, and The School of Athens is one of the four frescos of Raphael of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace. It was produced in the preiod 1510 - 1511 for Pope Julius II..

Apollo and the Muses in the centre with groups of poets a little lower on either side and other groups filling the spaces to right and left of the window head. At first sight the design seems less symmetrical and formal than the others, with a lyrical freedom befitting the subject, but in reality it is no less perfect in its ponderation. The group of trees above Apollo and the reclining figures either side of him accent the centrality of his position. From this point the line of heads rises in either direction to the figures of Homer and of the Muse whose back is turned to the spectator, and the perpendicularity of these two figures carries upward into the arch the vertical lines of the window. From this point the lateral masses of foliage take up the drooping curve and unite it to the arch, and this curve is strongly reinforced by the building up toward either side of the foreground groups and by the disposition of the arms of Sappho and of the poets immediately behind her, while, to disguise its formality, it is contradicted by the long line of Sappho's body, which echoes that of the bearded poet immediately to the right of the window and gives a sweep to the left to the whole lower part of the composition. It is the immediate and absolute solution of the problem, and so small a thing as the scarf of the back-turned Muse plays its necessary part in it, balancing, as it does, the arm of the Muse who stands highest on the left and establishing one of a number of subsidiary garlands that play through and bind together the wonderful design Kenyon Kox

The Blind Homer "Homeros" singing his epic poems. Dante Alighieri with the red dress and a serious angry look "communicates" with Virgil on the right side of Homer who looks at Dante "back in the future" .

Clio, Thalia, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Calliope, Erato, Urania, Melpomene from a Roman Sarcophag

Apollo as Mousagetes "Muse-leader" sitting under a laurel tree playing a Lira da Braccio with the nine Muses

Persons

Calliope (Beautiful Voice) – epic poetry. (Mother of Orpheus) (Orpheus Illustrations)
Euterpe (Delight) – music.
Erato (eros (love) Lovely One) – love poetry.
Thalia (thallein (to bloom), Festivity) – comedy.
Clio (kleos(glory) / kleiein (to celebrate) / Celebration/Fame) – history.
Urania (ouranos (sky) Heavenly One) – astronomy.
Terpsichore (Delight of dancing/choruses) – dance.
Melpomene (melpein (to sing) the Singing goddess) – tragedy.
Polyhymnia (poly (many) and hymnos (hymn) or mnasthai (to remember) Many Songed/Hymned) – sacred poetry. (considered also as inventor of the lyre)

Inspired by Ariadne ?

3

Polyhymnia

4

Terpsichore

10

Melpomene

11

Plautus

12

Terence

13

Ovid

14

Sannazaro

15

Cornelius Gallus

16

Anacreon

17

Sappho

25

Scribe

26

Dante Alighieri, (13.5.1265 – 14.9.1321) "The Divine Comedy"

Andrea Mantega's Parnassus , 1497, , Louvre Paris, maybe influenced Raphael

Quote

"Thus on the poetic mount beside the source of Helicon the dream of Humanism is fulfilled in the joy of living and intellectual pleasures. The whole code of classic art is formulated in these unrivalled pictures. In them beauty, nobility of posture, purity and grace of form, the sense of rhythm and life--all combine to form one joyous whole. The serenity of Greek art is recovered without effort, and the noblest harmony is the result. It is the most complete expression of the magnificent ideal which for a time was believed realizable in the Church and which was called Humanism." Catholic Encyclopedia

The School of Athens

Ingres: The Apotheosis of Homer

Archelaos: The Apotheosis of Homer

Grove of the Muses on Mount Parnassus drawing after Stackelberg. M. Maas, Das Antike Delphi. Orakel, Schätze, Monumente