The Ultimate Easter Egg

In 1509, Pope Julius II commissioned Raphael to paint the walls of his private library in the Vatican. The result — The School of Athens — depicts history's greatest philosophers in an impossible meeting. But Raphael painted himself into the scene, placing his own face in the same company as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.

Raphael appears at the far right edge, looking directly at the viewer. By inserting himself among the greatest thinkers in history, he declared that art was intellectual work on par with philosophy, at a time when painters were still considered craftsmen.