Artist Dominique Wagner painted the Da Vinci Code – ‘Squaring of the circle by connecting the dots’ and created her version of the ‘Vitruvian Man’. Using the ATELIER V-man as a model.
The inscription in a square and a circle in the original painting of Leonardo da Vinci from around 1490 (estimate value £860 million) comes from a description by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his ten books on Architecture, the treatise ‘De Architectura’. Hence the name V-man.
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.
The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, until February 24, 2020. https://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/leonardo-da-vinci
The V-MAN
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.
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.” (Professor Martin Kemp)
‘De Architecture’, published as Ten Books on Architecture, is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (approx. 90-20 BC) and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture.