Vitruvian Man

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Vitruvian Man (Template:Langx) is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to Template:Circa. Inspired by the Roman architect Vitruvius, it depicts a nude man in two overlapping standing positions, inscribed within a circle and a square. Art historian Carmen C. Bambach described it as "justly ranked among the all-time iconic images of Western civilization".Template:Sfnp While not the only drawing inspired by Vitruvius, Leonardo's work uniquely combines artistic vision with scientific inquiry and is often considered an archetypal representation of the High Renaissance.

The drawing illustrates Leonardo's study of ideal human proportions, derived from Vitruvius but refined through his own observations, contemporary works, and the treatise De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti. Created in Milan, the Vitruvian Man likely passed to his student Francesco Melzi, and later to Venanzio de Pagave, who encouraged engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to publish an engraving of it, spreading the image widely. It was then owned by Giuseppe Bossi, before being acquired in 1822 by the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, where it remains. Because of its fragility, the drawing is rarely displayed. It was loaned to the Louvre in 2019 for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death.

Name

The drawing is described by Leonardo's notes as Template:Lang,Template:Sfnp variously translated as The Proportions of the Human Figure after Vitruvius,Template:Sfnp or Proportional Study of a Man in the Manner of Vitruvius.Template:Sfnp It is much better known as the Vitruvian Man.Template:Sfnp The art historian Carlo Pedretti lists it as Homo Vitruvius, study of proportions with the human figure inscribed in a circle and a square, and later as simply Homo Vitruvius.Template:Sfnp

Description

Composition

The drawing was executed primarily with pen and light-brown ink, while there are traces of brown wash (watercolor).Template:SfnpTemplate:Refn The paper measures Template:Convert, larger than most of Leonardo's folio manuscript sheets,Template:Refn while the paper itself was originally made somewhat unevenly, given its irregular edges.Template:Sfnp Close examination of the drawing reveals that it was meticulously prepared, and is devoid of "sketchy and tentative" lines.Template:Sfnp Leonardo used metalpoint with a calipers and compass to make precise lines, and small tick marks were used for measurements.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp These compass marks demonstrate an inner structure of "measured intervals" which is displayed in tandem with the general structure created by the geometric figures.Template:Sfnp

The Vitruvian Man depicts a nude man facing forward, surrounded by a square and a circle.Template:Sfnp The man is portrayed in different stances simultaneously: an "X" pose and a "T" pose. For the former, his arms are stretched diagonally above his shoulders and his legs widely parted so that his feet and hands touch the edge of the circle centred on his navel. For the latter, his arms are outstretched horizonally and his legs are together, so that his hands, head and feet all touch the perimeter of the square.Template:Sfnp The scholar Carlo Vecce notes that this approach displays multiple phases of movement at once, akin to a photograph.Template:Sfnp The man's fingers and toes are arranged carefully as to not breach the surrounding shapes.Template:Sfnp Commentators often note that Leonardo went out of his way to create an artistic depiction of the man, rather than a simple portrayal.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp According to the biographer Walter Isaacson, the use of delicate lines, an intimate stare, and intricate hair curls, "weaves together the human and the divine".Template:Sfnp Pedretti notes close similarities between the man and the angel of Leonardo's earlier Annunciation painting.Template:Sfnp

Text

The text above the image, written in mirror writing, reads:

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And below: Template:Verse translation

Background

Historical context

The moderately successful architect and engineer Vitruvius lived from Template:Circa BCE, primarily in the Roman Republic.Template:Sfnp He is best known for authoring Template:Lang (On Architecture), later called the Ten Books on Architecture, which is the only substantial architecture treatise that survives from antiquity.Template:Sfnp The work's third volume includes a discussion concerning body proportions,Template:Sfnp where the figures of a man in a circle and a square are respectively referred to as Template:Lang, Template:Lang.Template:Sfnp Vitruvius explained that:

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19th-century historians often postulated that Leonardo had no substantial inspiration from the ancient world, propagating his stance as a "modern genius" who rejected all of classicism.Template:Sfnp This has been heavily disproven by many documented accounts from Leonardo's colleagues or records of him either owning, reading, and being influenced by writings from antiquity.Template:Sfnp The treatise of Vitruvius was long kept obscurely in monk's manuscript copies, but "rediscovered" in the 15th century by Poggio Bracciolini among works such as De Rerum natura.Template:Sfnp Many artists then attempted to design figures which would satisfy Vitruvius' description, with the earliest being three such images by Francesco di Giorgio Martini around the 1470s.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Leonardo may have been influenced by the architect Giacomo Andrea, with whom he records as having dined, in 1490.Template:Sfnp Andrea created his own Vitruvian Man drawing that year, which was unknown to scholars until the 1980s.Template:Sfnp

Creation

The proportions of the arm, a drawing by Leonardo which was probably in preparation for the Vitruvian Man

Leonardo's version of the Vitruvian Man corrected inaccuracies in Vitruvius's account, particularly related to the head, due to use of book two of the De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti.Template:Sfnp Earlier drawings of the same subject "assumed that the circle and square should be centered around the navel", akin to Vitruvius's account, while Leonardo made the scheme work by using the man's genitals as the center of the square, and the navel as the center of the circle.Template:Sfnp It is likely that Leonardo's drawings dated to 1487–1490, and entitled The proportions of the arm, were related to the Vitruvian Man, possibly serving as preparatory sketches.Template:Sfnp

Some commentators have speculated that Leonardo incorporated the golden ratio in the drawing, possibly due to his illustrations of Luca Pacioli's Divina proportione, partially plagiarized from Piero della Francesca,Template:SfnpTemplate:Refn concerning the ratio.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp However, the Vitruvian Man is likely to have been drawn before Leonardo met Pacioli, and there has been doubt over the accuracy of such an observation.Template:Sfnp As architectural scholar Vitor Murtinho explains, a circle tangent to the base of a square, with the radius and square sides related by the golden ratio, would pass exactly through the top two corners of the square, unlike Leonardo's drawing. He suggests instead constructions based on a regular octagon or on the vesica piscis.Template:Sfnp

Leonardo's drawing is almost always dated to around 1490 during his first Milanese period.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The exact dating is not completely agreed upon and earlier generations of art historians, including Arthur E. Popham, frequently dated the work anywhere from 1485 to 1490.Template:Sfnp Two leading art historians differ in this respect; Martin Kemp gives Template:Circa,Template:SfnpTemplate:Refn while Carmen C. Bambach contends that the earliest possible date—which "one may not entirely discount"—is 1488.Template:Sfnp Bambach, in addition to Pedretti, Giovanna Nepi Scirè and Annalisa Perissa Torrini give a slightly broader range of Template:Circa.Template:Sfnp Bambach explains that this range fits "best with the manner of exact, engraving-like parallel hatching contained within robust pen-and-ink outlines, over traces of lead paint, stylus-ruling, and compass composition".Template:Sfnp

Provenance

After Leonardo's death, the drawing most likely passed to his student Francesco Melzi (1491–1570),Template:Sfnp who was bequeathed most of Leonardo's possessions.Template:Sfnp From then on, the drawing's provenance history is almost certain: it found its way to Cesare Monti (1594–1650), was passed to his heir Anna Luisa Monti, then to the De Page family, first Template:Ill (in 1777) and then his son Gaudenzio de Page.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp While owned by the elder De Page, he convinced the engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to publish a book of Leonardo's drawings, which would be the first widespread dissemination of the Vitruvian Man and many other Leonardo drawings.Template:Sfnp The younger de Page sold the drawing to Giuseppe Bossi, who described, discussed, and illustrated it in the fourth chapter of his 1810 monograph on Leonardo's The Last Supper, Template:Lang (On The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci).Template:Sfnp This chapter was published as a stand-alone study the next year Template:Lang (On the opinions of Leonardo da Vinci regarding the symmetry of human bodies).Template:Sfnp After Bossi's death in 1815, the drawing was sold to the abbot Luigi Celotti in 1818, and entered into the Venetian Gallerie dell'Accademia's collection in 1822, where it has since remained.Template:Sfnp Because of its high artistic quality and its well-recorded history of provenance, Leonardo's authorship of the Vitruvian Man has never been doubted.Template:Sfnp

The Vitruvian Man is rarely displayed as extended exposure to light would cause fading; it is kept on the fourth floor of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in a locked room.Template:Sfnp In 2019, the Louvre requested to borrow the drawing for their monumental Léonard de Vinci exhibition, which celebrated the 500th anniversary of the artist's death.Template:Sfnp They faced substantial resistance from the heritage group Italia Nostra, who contended that the drawing was too fragile to be transported, and filed a lawsuit.Template:Sfnp At a hearing on 16 October 2019, a judge ruled that the group had not proven their claim, but set a maximum amount of light for the drawing to be exposed to as well as a subsequent rest period to offset its overall exposure to light.Template:Sfnp The Louvre promised to lend paintings by Raphael to Italy for his own 500th death anniversary; Italy's Minister for Cultural Affairs Dario Franceschini stated that "Now a great cultural operation can start between Italy and France on the two exhibitions about Leonardo in France and Raphael in Rome."Template:Sfnp

In 2022, the Gallerie dell'Accademia, which owns the drawing, sued German jigsaw puzzle manufacturer Ravensburger for reproducing the artwork in one of the company's jigsaw puzzles. Ravensburger started selling the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in Italy in 2009 and in 2019 the museum sent the company a cease-and-desist letter and demanded 10% of the revenue. Ravensburger refused to comply and subsequently was sued by the museum under Italy's 2004 Template:Ill which governs reproductions of works deemed to be under Italy's cultural heritage. In its objections, the German company claimed that it had the right to reproduce the artwork because it was already in the public domain for centuries, and that the reproduction had occurred outside Italy and thus was not subject to Italy's Cultural Heritage Code. An Italian court rejected Ravensburger's arguments and decided in favor of the museum.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> In a ruling dated 17 November 2022, the court ordered the puzzle company to cease producing the product for commercial purposes and levied a fine of 1,500 euros for every day that the company failed to comply.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp In March 2024, a German court ruled in favor of the company, stating that the Cultural Heritage Code is not applicable outside Italy, and therefore a violation of the sovereignty of the individual states. In response, an Italian government official argues they will challenge this "abnormal" German ruling even before the European and international courts.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Licensing fees for famous artworks are an important source of income for Italian museums, and Italian law says that museums owning famous public domain works hold the copyright on those works forever and can control who is allowed to make copies and derivative works of them.<ref name=":0" />

Legacy

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The Vitruvian Man is often considered an archetypal representative of the High Renaissance, just as Leonardo himself came to represent the archetypal Renaissance man.Template:Sfnp It holds a unique distinction in aligning art, mathematics, science, classicism, and naturalism.Template:Sfnp The art historian Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, writing for Encyclopædia Britannica, states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a Template:Lang ('cosmography of the microcosm'). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy, in microcosm, for the workings of the universe."Template:Sfnp

Kemp calls the drawing "the world's most famous drawing",Template:Sfnp while Bambach describes it as "justly ranked among the all-time iconic images of Western civilization".Template:Sfnp Reflecting on its fame, Bambach further stated in 2019 that "the endless recent fetishizing of the image by modern commerce through ubiquitous reproductions (in popular books, advertising, and the Euro coin) has kidnapped it from the realm of Renaissance drawing, making it difficult for the viewer to appreciate it as a work of nuanced, creative expression."Template:Sfnp

See also

References

Notes

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Citations

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Sources

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Further reading

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