Vitruvian Man is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci ( circa 1488) which is intended to illustrate the proportions suggested by Vitruvius as to the various body parts of the perfect man. Vitruvius, and architect, had done number measurements of live individuals in order to come up with what he felt were the ideal ratios or relative dimensions of such body parts as arms, legs, fingers, facial features, etc.
Leonardo da Vinci, the prototypical Renaissance Man, was an artist, scientist, philosopher, and writer of the Fifteenth Century. His designs of many inventions were centuries ahead of their times. Leonardo also painted such famous masterpieces as The Mona Lisa.
Vitruvian Man, an ink drawing on canvas, now residing in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice, Italy, has also been known as the Canon of Proportions. The Vitruvian Man is simultaneously inserted within a circle and a square and shows a male figure with limbs stretched in two sets of positions.
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The Vitruvian Man drawing faithfully depicts such mandates by Vitruvius that a man's palm has a width of four fingers. The distance from the person's hair fringe to the chin bottom is one-tenth of the man's height. The person's arm span equals his height, and so on.
Leonardo actually compared his own measurements of subjects of the day to the written findings of Vitruvius, sometimes differing in his representation to those prescribed by Vitruvius.
Leonardo, along with many sculptors and painters of the day, adhered pretty closely to the Vitruvian recipe when creating their works of art.
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