Vitruvian Man

The Vitruvain Man is one of my favorite works done by Leonardo DaVinci. It’s beautiful renderings and calligraphic texts make this work one of a kind. DaVinci has created many beautiful paintings, yet I enjoy the sketches from his workbooks more. Only through Davinci’s sketches and notes can one get a sense of what a true genius he truly was. He was a very brilliantly scientific artist.

This drawing was named after a famous architect of the Renaissance. This is fitting because the drawing relates to the architecture of the human form. In this drawing, DaVinci studies the proportions of the human body. He shows the proportions of the body and how they relate to shapes such as the square and circle. He also demonstrates the proportions of the different body parts in relation to others.

“Leonardo’s famous drawings of the Vitruvian proportions of a man’s body first standing inscribed in a square and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle provides an excellent early example of the way in which his studies of proportion fuse artistic and scientific objectives. It is Leonardo, not Vitruvius, who points out that ‘If you open the legs so as to reduce the stature by one-fourteenth and open and raise your arms so that your middle fingers touch the line through the top of the head, know that the centre of the extremities of the outspread limbs will be the umbilicus, and the space between the legs will make and equilateral triangle’ (Accademia, Venice). Here he provides one of his simplest illustrations of a shifting ‘centre of magnitude’ without a corresponding change of ‘centre of normal gravity’. This remains passing through the central line from the pit of the throat through the umbilicus and pubis between the legs. Leonardo repeatedly distinguishes these two different ‘centres’ of a body, i.e., the centers of ‘magnitude’ and ‘gravity (Keele 252).”

Though this work of Davinci’s is just from his sketchbook, I consider it a beautiful piece of art. I particularly like the wispiness of the lines in the drawing. The lines of the body of the man are reflected in the body of text that surrounds the image. This text in the work are merely DaVinci’s hand-written notes but posses an organic and graceful quality. I think that the image and the text surrounding it make a complete and beautiful composition.

Another reason that I like Vitruvian Man is because of the anatomical representation that it holds. I am a massage therapist and I have a very large print of this work hanging in my workspace. The work greatly reflects the beauty and strength of the human body, which is shard by the art of massage. I love the atmosphere that it creates in my environment. In addition, its antique color is a very neutral and beautiful tone.

Quotation from: http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/welcome.html