Click on the picture of Diogenes to find out some information about him.
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This picture of Diogenes the Cynic is a doubly clever piece of painting by Raphael. On the one hand, Diogenes’ casual and even contemptuous sprawl suggests the iconoclastic view of this philosopher and his followers, who rejected social convention and conventional philosophy at the same time. (The members of the school were called “Cynics” from the Greek word for “dogs,” inasmuch as they were said to live like dogs.) You can see two figures to his left moving apprehensively away from him. On the other hand, the figure of Diogenes plays an important compositional role at the same time, for his body forms one of the major foreground lines converging toward Plato and Aristotle.