Vitruvian Man
The drawing was executed primarily with pen and light-brown ink. Traces of brown wash appear on the paper, which measures 34 by 25 centimeters. This sheet is larger than most of Leonardo's folio manuscript pages. The edges are irregular because the paper was originally made somewhat unevenly. Close examination reveals meticulous preparation without sketchy or tentative lines. Leonardo used metalpoint with a calipers and compass to make precise lines. Small tick marks were used for measurements throughout the work. These compass marks demonstrate an inner structure of measured intervals displayed in tandem with the geometric figures. The artist drew a nude man facing forward surrounded by a square and a circle. He portrayed the figure in different stances simultaneously as an X pose and a T pose. For the former stance his arms stretched diagonally above his shoulders while his legs parted widely so that feet and hands touched the edge of the circle centered on his navel. For the latter stance his arms extended horizontally while his legs remained together so that hands head and feet all touched the perimeter of the square.
The moderately successful architect Vitruvius lived from 80 BCE to 15 CE primarily in the Roman Republic. He authored On Architecture later called the Ten Books on Architecture. This work remains the only substantial architecture treatise surviving from antiquity. The third volume includes a discussion concerning body proportions where figures of a man in a circle and square appear respectively as anthropos en kyklo and anthropos en tetragono. Vitruvius explained specific ratios for these forms. Nineteenth-century historians often postulated Leonardo had no substantial inspiration from the ancient world. They propagated a stance that he was a modern genius rejecting all classicism. This view has been heavily disproven by documented accounts from colleagues or records of him owning reading and being influenced by writings from antiquity. 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. 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. Leonardo may have been influenced by the architect Giacomo Andrea whom he recorded as having dined with in 1490. Andrea created his own Vitruvian Man drawing that year unknown to scholars until the 1980s.
Leonardo's version 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. Earlier drawings assumed 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. It is likely that Leonardo's drawings dated to 1487, 1490 entitled The proportions of the arm were related to the Vitruvian Man possibly serving as preparatory sketches. Some commentators speculated Leonardo incorporated the golden ratio possibly due to his illustrations of Luca Pacioli's Divina proportione partially plagiarized from Piero della Francesca concerning the ratio. 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. As architectural scholar Vitor Murtinho explains a circle tangent to the base of a square with radius and square sides related by the golden ratio would pass exactly through the top two corners unlike Leonardo's drawing. He suggests instead constructions based on a regular octagon or on the vesica piscis. Leonardo's drawing is almost always dated to around 1490 during his first Milanese period. The exact dating is not completely agreed upon and earlier generations including Arthur E. Popham frequently dated the work anywhere from 1485 to 1490. Two leading art historians differ in this respect; Martin Kemp gives 1490 while Carmen C. Bambach contends that the earliest possible date which one may not entirely discount is 1488.
After Leonardo's death the drawing most likely passed to his student Francesco Melzi who lived from 1491 to 1570. Melzi was bequeathed most of Leonardo's possessions. From then on the drawing's provenance history is almost certain: it found its way to Cesare Monti who lived from 1594 to 1650. It was passed to his heir Anna Luisa Monti then to the De Page family first in 1777 and then his son Gaudenzio de Page. While owned by the elder De Page he convinced the engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to publish a book of Leonardo's drawings. This would be the first widespread dissemination of the Vitruvian Man and many other Leonardo drawings. 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 On The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. This chapter was published as a stand-alone study the next year On the opinions of Leonardo da Vinci regarding the symmetry of human bodies. 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.
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. 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. 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. At a hearing on the 16th of 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. 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.
In 2022 the Gallerie dell'Accademia 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 law 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. In a ruling dated the 17th of 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. 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.
The Vitruvian Man is often considered an archetypal representative of the High Renaissance just as Leonardo himself came to represent the archetypal Renaissance man. It holds a unique distinction in aligning art mathematics science classicism and naturalism. 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 cosmography of the microcosm. He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy in microcosm for the workings of the universe. Kemp calls the drawing the world's most famous drawing while Bambach describes it as justly ranked among the all-time iconic images of Western civilization. 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.
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Common questions
What are the physical dimensions and materials of the Vitruvian Man drawing by Leonardo da Vinci?
The sheet measures 34 by 25 centimeters and was executed primarily with pen and light-brown ink. Traces of brown wash appear on the paper, which is larger than most of Leonardo's folio manuscript pages.
When was the Vitruvian Man created and what dates do art historians assign to it?
Leonardo's drawing is almost always dated to around 1490 during his first Milanese period. Two leading art historians differ in this respect; Martin Kemp gives 1490 while Carmen C. Bambach contends that the earliest possible date is 1488.
How did Leonardo correct inaccuracies in Vitruvius's account regarding body proportions?
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. Earlier drawings assumed the circle and square should be centered around the navel akin to Vitruvius's account.
Where is the original Vitruvian Man kept and how often is it displayed?
It is kept on the fourth floor of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in a locked room because extended exposure to light would cause fading. The drawing has remained there since entering the collection in 1822.
What legal ruling occurred between the Gallerie dell'Accademia and Ravensburger in 2022?
An Italian court ruled in favor of the museum on the 17th of November 2022 and ordered the puzzle company to cease producing the product for commercial purposes. The court levied a fine of 1,500 euros for every day that the company failed to comply with the order.