School of Athens is a huge painting by Raffaello in the Vatican Museum, and very popular, because of the faces he put in it. All the famous Greeks are there – Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, Euclid, etc, but he’s painted the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to represent two of the characters in the painting. (Leonardo is the old guy in the center representing Plato, and Michelangelo is the mopey Heraclitus right in front. Raphael painted himself in the extreme right facing the viewer, but difficult to spot here.)

Because the painting is so popular, there are always crowds around it, and very difficult to photograph. So, once again, I got tempted by the puzzle on sale. 1000-piece puzzles are no longer a challenge for me, but quite entertaining, and this one got done in 3 days flat:

At this time, Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, and was always suspicious of Raphael, who spent quite a bit of time observing him.