Raphael's painting The School of Athens is unusual because it isn't a mirror of Renaissance society but it is more of a mirror of Renaissance thought. Most of the people in the painting are from different time eras and two Ancient Greek philisophers are the focus. But these people were all those who were respected during the Renaissance - becuase the Renaissance was actually a rebirth of the knowledge and information that was lost during the Dark Ages. In the painting you can see famous philosophers, mathematicians, scientists and thinkers. The painting is also a mirror of Renaissance architecture because it was set in a Roman building. Roman architecture which was symmetrical, and filled with arches and columns was copied in many Renaissance buildings. Raphael was very clever by painting something that was a mirror of what people rediscovered and studied.
Averroes is the Spanish name of a famous philosopher and doctor called Abu I-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushid. You can see him sitting on the stairs listening attentively to Aristotle (his main study) and Plato. I chose this character because he is Arab, so we have something common. He was an amazing person because he contributed to many areas including law, philosophy, politics, music, medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, and physics. One of the reasons Raphael included Ibn Rushid in the School of Athens was because of his study of Aristotle and the way he annotated his works. Another key contribution was in medicine because Ibn Rushid was the first person to suggest that the retina of the eye had photoreceptors in it. I admire Ibn Rushid because he bought great knowledge to the world, and he was sort of a link between Arab and Western philosophies. 