Leonardo Da Vinci, The Mathematics Behind Vitruvian Man

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All works of art are complex due to the different styles and efforts that are put in to creating a work of art. Almost anything can be art, it depends what the viewer makes it out to be. When observing art it is easy to get caught up in the beauty, and not ponder much about what the artist was thinking, or the process behind creating the piece. In simpler words, humans often times think that it just simply looks pretty. Due to the conversation I had with my grandfather, the book I read about the piece, and the research I have done I have discovered that Leonardo Da Vinci was fixated on the idea of proportion through mathematics; similar to many artists, which is apparent through his piece Vitruvian Man. My grandfather, Gian Franco Donati, …show more content…

Vitruvian Man was completed in 1490 and the main focus was on the use of the square and circle Da Vinci used to form one image for the eye. This use of geometry created proportionate images and easy viewing points for the audience. Although, I reached an epiphany when viewing this work of art and it was that everything is always changing, and that Da Vinci’s way of making the man fit into a square, and spread when in a circle, helped me realize that a possible deeper point to this would be that nature and the human race is always changing and adaptable. Da Vinci, realizing that the human arms and legs are perfectly proportionate to the body, sparked interest in other artists who researched this perfect proportionality and made artwork and studies of their own. “Leonardo da Vinci famously illustrated the proportional canon in his drawing known simply as The Vitruvian Man. But there have been others. Fra Giovanni Giocondo, Cesare Ceaseriano, Francesco Giorgi, Albrecht Dürer, William Blake, and Le Corbusier have all investigated Vitruvius' ideas in their own work. Even The Simpsons has made a passing reference to the Vitruvian Man” (Vitruvian). This quote not only shows the various artists who also took an interest, but highlights the fact that even in modern shows and time this work of art is

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