The covers for the Guns N’ Roses albums Use Your Illusion I & Use Your Illusion II use the same artwork but with different color schemes. “Use Your Illusion I” uses warm colors red & orange.
While “Use Your Illusion II” uses cool colors blue & purple.
Artist Mark Kotsabi is credited with doing the artwork for both covers yet all he really did was take a portion of a painting made by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael made in or around 1510-1511. The name of the painting is The School of Athens (Scuola di Atene) and it is located in the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
The figures used on the GN’R album cover, unlike many of the other figures in the painting (Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, etc.), have not been identified as any specific philosopher.
Apparently, Kotsabi had already made the stylized detail of the Raphael painting which he called “Use You Illusion” before the GN’R album was made. Axl Rose bought the painting and liked it so much it became the album cover and the album title. Click below for some facts about GN’R’s “Appetite For Destruction“.