WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE DRAWING?
The writings of Vitruvius (circa 75 BC — c.15 BC), the first great Roman architect and architectural historian, were the inspiration for da Vinci.
The drawing — also called Proportions of Man and Canon of Proportions — shows the ideal human body, as laid out by Vitruvius in Book II of his De architectura (‘On architecture’).
Vitruvius declared the proportions of the human body were the main influence on the classical orders of architecture, and that the ideal human body follows particular proportions.
Da Vinci was attempting to illustrate this, showing the ideal proportions of the human body and how they are in harmony with universal principles because a body can be fitted into both a square and a circle.
‘It was seen as representing the unity of the Cosmos and the concept of Man being the measure of all things,’ says Professor Martin Kemp, who has written a biography of the artist.
‘Vitruvius said a man can be inscribed inside a square and a circle, and everyone thought that meant putting the centre of the two shapes on the same spot. Leonardo was the first to make it work by putting the two centres in different places. It’s a brilliantly tricky drawing.’
Da Vinci stipulated that the belly button is the centre of the body when the arms are raised to form a circle with the feet. However, when the human body fits into a square, the centre is focused on the groin.
Crucially, the length of a man’s outspread arms is equal to his height.
Next to the drawing, da Vinci wrote in his favoured ‘mirror writing’ that he took his human proportions from Vitruvius: ‘The human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height.’but he also dictates other rules: the length of the hand, from wrist to tip of middle finger, is the same as from the chin to the top of the forehead. The foot is a sixth as long as the body; the forearm is a quarter as long.
The drawing is ink on paper and is just 14 inches by 10 inches. Da Vinci completed it in around 1490, when he was 38. Rather than being a sketch, it is a ‘presentation drawing’, designed to be presented to a patron. ‘This is not a draft,’ says Italian restoration expert Luigi Ficacci. ‘Leonardo meant for it to be presented to a court, and so the ink is good and the paper is good quality, better than the stuff we use today.’