The vitruvian man

In the western world, there was a time when man became the epicenter of all things known. Although the prevailing Catholic religion continued to dictate the ethical and moral rules of social coexistence, little by little, among the most enlightened elite, a reaction to this was forged. Medieval theological mentality that led to the rise of individualism, which, in turn, found its banner in a drawing made by the genuine Leonardo Da Vinci, known as The vitruvian man.

Taking up some lessons already happened in a PROFESSOR about the Renaissance and Leonardo Da Vinci, in this lesson of a PROFESSOR we will talk about the most famous drawing in the History of Art, which has awakened countless theories, The Vitruvian Man: definition and characteristics.

The Vitruvian Man is actually A study what Leonardo da Vinci he made about 1490 on the ideal proportions of the human body. Drawing inspiration from one of the ten books on architecture by the Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius (c. 28 a. C.).

On a paper no larger than 34.4 cm x 25.5 cm and painted in pen and ink, Leonardo drew a

In the upper and lower margins of this drawing, Leonardo included a text written with his usual specular writing, where he describes the ideal proportions of the human body; the same ones that he captured in the drawing, thus facilitating exact measurements that, to date, had been a mystery subject to chance.

Leonardo's greatness is to endow the measurements of the human body with a reliable methodology based on mathematics and endorsed by the ancients.

As we progressed in this lesson from a TEACHER, The vitruvian man, Leonardo was inspired by the writings of the Roman engineer Marco Vitruvius, thus giving an answer to a question that worried him, and much, to the humanists of the Renaissance, and that it had its origin in the re-discovery of the treatise of architecture of Vitruvian, The ten architecture books.

Leonardo Da Vinci made The vitruvian man coinciding with a moment in history in which a new conception of man. Since the 15th century, the scholars of the time, humanists and Renaissance, believed they were recovering the dignity of man, who for too many years had been relegated to being a mere servant of the Mister. Now, as the popular expression goes, "man becomes the navel of the world", in the center of everything known.

This change of conception would never have been possible if, in those years, it had not happened from a speculative science to an empirical one. And this change would never have occurred without the recovery of texts from Classical Antiquity, which endowed medieval men with a anthropocentric vision of the world, within which man chooses his destiny.

Precisely, The ten architecture books Vitruvius were key to the anthropocentric conception of the world, paradigm, on the other hand, of the Renaissance. Although during the Middle Ages the work of the Roman Vitruvius was already known, it was not until 1414, when P. Bracciolini rediscovered a copy of the treatise in the abbey of Saint Gallen, that the work became the philosophical and aesthetic regulation par excellence.

However, the humanists encountered a difficulty, the Vitruvian text was very ambiguous and often misinterpreted. It is known that the original treatise had illustrations that accompanied the text, at the same time, that explained it and made it understandable. But in the Renaissance, these illustrations were lost.

It was with this loss that skilled Renaissance artists devised their illustrated representation of the Vitruvian man and shed some light on their explanations. Some of the most accurate were created by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, around 1480, and Giacomo Andrea da Ferrara, Leonardo's friend, who is believed to have been inspired to conclude his Vitruvian Man, a great achievement of the Renaissance.

Until 1815 it belonged to the collection of the painter and writer Giuseppe Bossi to later be bought at an auction house by Luigi Celotti and since 1822 that it was acquired by the Gallery of the Academy of Venice, is exhibited in this space, although to the public, for reasons of conservation, once every ten years.