School of Athens recreated at St. Ben's and St. John's

Check out this amazing living recreation of Raphael's "School of Athens" painting by faculty at the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University.

The Chronicle of Higher Education describes some of the challenges that Anthony Cunningham, chair of the philosophy department, faced in pulling it off:

One challenge, of course, was costuming. Some folks brought their own, but Cunningham had assembled about 30 little grocery bags of improvised outfits with numbers corresponding to the fresco’s characters on a chart. He’d spent weeks scouring bargain counters at fabric stores, and eying sheets and table cloths. With evident pride he points out Alexander the Great’s helmet, which the careful observer may detect bears some resemblance to a spray-painted baseball helmet with the bill sawed off, a little foam insulation, and construction paper. Admire, too, the matching armor transformed with a bit of aluminum foil from a chest protector borrowed from the softball team.

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