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Vitruvian Man and Divine Proportion



Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man was originally an illustration for a book on the works of the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (first century B.C.), who designed many of the most beautiful temples in Rome.

Describing how a temple should be planned and built, Vitruvius wrote:
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The planning of temples depends upon symmetry: and the method of this architects must diligently apprehend. It arises from proportion (which in Greek is called analogia). Proportion consists of
taking a fixed module, in each case, both for the parts of a building and for the whole, by which the method of symmetry is put to practice.

For without symmetry and proportion no temple can have a regular plan; that is, it must have an exact proportion worked out after the fashion of the members of a finely shaped human body.


In this passage is found the key to the composition of ancient architecture, which was firmly revived in the Renaissance.




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Michelangelo Drawings


We know and admire Michelangelo as a sculptor, painter and architect, a true genius of Renaissance art. Many of the Michelangelo drawings that he completed, some as studies for his larger works such as the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and some as gifts for friends, are notable works of art in their own right.

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