Art Meets Architecture: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci

When you hear the name of Leonardo Da Vinci, there are many things that come to your mind. He was Italian and a genius of the era that he lived. He was not only a painter, sculptor and writer but also an inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician and amateur anatomist.

One of his masterpiece is called Vitruvian Man. He was inspired by ancient Roman (Italian) architect, Vitruvius who proposed theories about the human body proportions. Vitruvius believed that the proportions and measurements of the human body were perfect and correct. Therefore, he proposed that a properly constructed temple should reflect and relate to the parts of the human body. In this work, Leonardo used both image and text to express the ideas and theories of Vitruvius, which can also be called as golden or divine proportion. The Vitruvian ideas, presented by Leonardo, formed the basis of Renaissance proportion theories in art and architecture.