Mark Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect, argued in one of his books that nature ordered the following proportions in the structure of the human body: the length of four fingers is equal to the length of a palm, four palms are equal to a foot, six palms are one cubit, four cubits are the height of a person. Four cubits are equal to a step, and twenty-four palms are the height of a person. He used all these proportions in his architectural structures. If you spread your legs so that the distance between them is equal to 1/14 of a person's height, and raise your hands so that your middle fingers are at the level of the crown, then the center point of the body, equidistant from all limbs, will be your navel. The space between the legs apart and the floor forms an equilateral triangle. The length of the outstretched arms will be equal to the height. The distance from the roots of the hair to the tip of the chin is equal to one tenth of human height. The distance from the top of the chest to the crown of the head is one-sixth of the height. The distance from the upper chest to the roots of the hair is one seventh. The distance from the nipples to the crown is exactly a quarter of the height. The greatest shoulder width is an eighth of the height. The distance from the elbow to the fingertip is one-fifth of the height, from the elbow to the axillary fossa is one-eighth. The length of the entire arm is one tenth of the height. The origin of the genitals is right in the middle of the body. The foot is one-seventh of the growth. The distance from the toe to the patella is equal to a quarter of the height, and the distance from the patella to the beginning of the genitals is also equal to a quarter of the height. The distance from the tip of the chin to the nose and from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows will be the same and, like the length of the ear, equal to one third of the face. …
The above text is a complete translation of the signature accompanying Leonardo's drawing, titled "Vitruvian Man". This is a translation from the book of Mark Vitruvius, since the drawing of the great artist was originally created as an illustration for a book dedicated to the works of Vitruvius.
The Vitruvian Man is perhaps the most famous and recognizable drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. This is the favorite drawing of the heroine of The Da Vinci Code, Sophie Neve. Her grandfather Jacques Sauniere takes the pose of the "Vit-Ruvian man" before his death. Posters depicting a man with outstretched arms and legs spread wide have adorned the walls of at least two generations of young people. Vitruvius - an architect, engineer and writer, lived in Ancient Rome at the end of the 1st century BC and at the very beginning of the 1st century AD. His main work - "Architecture" - consists of ten books. In them Vitruvius examines the issues of the urban planning of Rome, the engineering and architectural structures of the Eternal City. In addition, the author devoted an entire section to the proportions of the human body.
Vitruvi was also remembered again during the Renaissance, and his theories greatly contributed to the growth and development of classicism at that time and in subsequent periods of history. The composition of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is entirely based on the passage quoted above from Vitruvius's treatise, which proved to be largely correct in emphasizing the rationalization of geometry by means of small integers.