Leonardo diVinci’s drawing of man in ideal form, the Vitruvian man, was first sketched in 1492 or so in one of his numerous journals. The image, a sketch of a nude male stretched into two separate poses within the space of a square and a circle, is one of his most famous works. Occasionally called the Canon of Proportions or Proportions of Man, the image has long been held as an important symbol for the proportions of man.

With the Vitruvian Man’s proportions, Leonardo da Vinci was able to blend both art and science, by very definition the goal of the Renaissance masters. Leonardo himself had a great deal of interest in human anatomy and the concept of proportion. One of Leonardo’s lasting mindsets and overall legacies for the age was the idea that the human body was a symbolic representation of the greater universe itself.

Vitruvian Man - 1492

Furthermore, the circle and square surrounding the male body in the drawing have been described as symbols themselves. Many believe that the square surrounding the body is a symbol of the material existence of man while the circle represents the spiritual existence. His goal through this drawing then was to create a direct correlation between the material and spiritual aspects of humanity.

His own writing in the notebook, written in his famous mirrored writing, described his sketch as a study of the proportions of the human body, in this case male. He utilized the words of the Roman architect Vitruvius to create his proportions for the ideal male body, which included:

• The Palm is the width of four fingers
• The Foot is the width of four palms
• The Cubit is the width of six palms
• A Man is four cubits tall
• Four cubits equals one pace
• The measurement of a man’s outspread arms is the same as his height.
• The hairline to the chin is equal to one-tenth of a man’s height
• The top of the head to the chin is one-eighth of a man’s height.
• Shoulder width shall be no more than one quarter of a man’s height

Leonardo’s own drawing combines both the descriptions of Vitruvius and his own observations to create a set careful crafted proportions with what many people have interpreted as symbols. The overall effect is to create a direct correlation between human symmetry and the universe. The positioning of the limbs in the drawing makes it possible to create upward of 16 different poses and the proportions remain the same.

The outer circle has been described as a full range of motion, though it does depart slightly from Vitruvius’ original writings by lowering the arms slightly. The secondary drawing shows a much less extended body but keeps the very same proportions in line with the rest of the drawing.

Over the course of the centuries, Da Vincci’s Vitruvian man has come to symbolize everything about Leonardo DaVinci’s calculated approach to both art and science and the beauty of the human form. Artists and scientists alike study high resolution Vitruvian Man copies as a means to recreate their own images and better understand those relationships.

The Paintings Featured in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” Book

The Da Vinci Code plays on many of the theories and mysteries that have long followed Leonardo Da Vinci and his eccentric methods around for the last 500 years. Despite the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, the book and film utilized numerous other paintings to make points about Da Vinci’s ties to the Priory of Scion. Many of those images, some of Da Vinci’s most enduring and famous legacies, have been around for years.

Madonna of the Rocks 1483

As the painting in the Louvre behind which is hidden the key Langdon finds before escaping the police, the Madonna of the Rocks is yet another incredible famous Da Vinci image. Da Vinci painted two versions of his famous first commission. The first of these two versions is that of the 1483 Madonna of the Rocks. Originally commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, the painting was to be an altar piece but was not completed at the time required of the contract with Da Vinci. For that reason, it was left unfinished for the better part of two years. However, because of its popularity, the painting was eventually painted again for another church’s same altar piece, that being the version that remains today in the London Gallery. In the Da Vinci code, it is remarked that this version of the painting was considered heretical by the church with Jesus kneeling to John and numerous symbols of femininity and masculinity littered throughout the rocky landscape.

Madonna of the Rocks 1506

Madonna of the Rocks - 1506

The second version of Da Vinci’s famous image of Jesus and John meeting on the trip to Egypt is located today in the London Gallery and was painted over 20 years after the original. The painting is believed to have been the result of the excessive popularity of the first, thus commissioned as a copy. Leonardo is not believed to have painted the entire work alone, though his contributions are noted by the shading and characteristic tones of his painting. In the Da Vinci Code, the London copy of the Madonna of the Rocks was supposedly the second version created by Da Vinci to mollify the enraged Church after his heretical first painting.

Adoration of the Magi

As one of Da Vinci’s original commissions, The Adoration of the Magi was never quite finished. Today it sits in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The painting itself depicts the traditional image of the wisest of men in the land bowing before the infant Christ. Thought the image was never completed, much has been made of the symbolism found in it by novels such as the Da Vinci Code. Located in back, beside the Tree are two figures that Brown denotes as Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Behind them is a Knight Templar and the careful constructed “V” shape in an onlooker’s hand is meant to represent femininity. The painting itself was left unfinished as Da Vinci left for Milan before he was able to get beyond the preliminary sketching stage of the commission.

Vitruvian Man

Vitruvian Man - 1492

The Vitruvian Man is a simple drawing found in Leonardo’s notebooks that has become one of his most enduring works, a symbol of art and science in unison and the perfect geometry and proportions that so intrigued him. The work depicts two poses of a man stretched out within a square and a circle, designed to show the perfect proportions of the male body as described by the Ancient Roman, Vitruvius and revised by Leonardo himself. In the Da Vinci Code, the French Curator of the Louvre is found dead in this pose, utilizing the geometry of the original to leave a message for Langdon and his granddaughter.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s artistic style derived from a variety of different purposes and causes throughout his life. He left us only a small handful of paintings to his name, barely more than half a dozen, but he is still recognized as one of the preeminent artists of the Western World. This derives greatly from his ability to think on and produce solutions and methods for almost every problem he saw.

As for what makes his artistic output so engaging and influential despite his lack thereof, the answer largely lies in the work he did as a scientist and thinker outside of art. His fascination with the human body – its composition, form and function – is best represented in the Vitruvian Man, but goes well beyond that simple sketch. But, Leonardo’s fascination went much deeper and with that fascination came a deep understanding of the human form. The paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci are testament to that.

By understanding what it was that made the human body work, Leonardo da Vinci, with simple watercolor paints, was able to depict the absolutely subtlety that was the human form with ease, best seen in the careful placement and perspective play of the Mona Lisa. He developed a new take on perspective in his artwork that artists before him had not yet attempted. In the Mona Lisa, single point perspective was preeminent and in the Last Supper, the revised perspective, radiating from Christ, with Judas as a member of the disciples at the table has been well documented.

Many people have broken down Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings and work into three main arenas. The first of those is that of understanding the world in which he lived produced countless drawings and observations on the nature of the world, the human body and the natural world. The second is that of imagination, in which Leonardo applied his observations to the creation and imagination of new ideas such as the thousands of inventions found in his notes. The third was his theoretical phase, in which he tried to understand the greater basis of the world and how everything worked. This is where his obsession with mathematics derived from.

Da Vinci’s artistic technique was a combination of all of his interests into a single expression of his internal energies. Though a good deal of his work can be given over to the necessity of gaining commissions and making money to survive, Leonardo’s actual productions were the culmination of his entire life’s work. The geometrical beauty of his paintings resulted from his extreme interest in the topic and his human forms, so incredibly alive in their expressions were the result of his ability to understand and replicate the physical nature of things around him. For Leonardo de Vinci, pictures he created were infinitely more intricate than the words he used to describe them.

Many of Da Vinci’s paintings were of a religious nature and that was par for the day and age in which he lived. Similarly, many of the techniques witnessed in his work are most likely results of the preceding style of the day. The feminine appearance of John in the Last Supper or the superimposition of his own facial features onto the Mona Lisa – most likely because he had studied his own face – have given rise to many other theories about his inclinations because of the incredible detail that his studies lent to his work.

To say Leonardo Da Vinci invented light, shadow, foreshortening, and perspective on his own is giving one man too much credit. However, looking at the work of his contemporaries and predecessors, it can definitely be said that his attention to the detail and form of the world around him created the kind of intellect and depth needed by a single man to discover such techniques. His use of sfumato in the Mona Lisa is legendary as well as the development of single point perspective. His incredible mastery of triangulated geometry in so many of his paintings has been replicated for centuries and he was able to, more than anyone else, understand the necessity of proper ratios and perspective. Leonardo Da Vinci’s artwork and paintings are an example of what the renaissance was about, the combination of curiosity, intellect and absolute talent. Leonardo Da Vinci’s images live on today as a testimony to that.