Why Is Leonardo Da Vinci Considered An Ideal Vitruvian Man

It is always hard and sometimes even wrong to be “black and white” about something. The Renaissance had many "key players" that each contributed equally to shaping a new era for art and society. Each of the great Renaissance artists integrated the ancient lessons of Greeks and Romans with their creativity to make spectacular art works; however, none of which can be a better representation of Renaissance than the other. For instance, while Filippo Brunelleschi engineered The Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, which is the largest dome since the antiquity, Alberti designed the facade of Santa Maria, which is truly an example of a remarkable Renaissance architecture. Thus, the contribution of any of the great architects to Renaissance is equal.

If the Renaissance is “the renewed interest in art and culture of Greeks and Romans”, da Vinci’s works, although not mostly in the form of actual physical buildings, are the embodiments of the principles of the Renaissance. The principles of the Renaissance are all about idealism and humanism; the notion that humans are perfect enough to represent divine things such as beauty and proportion. Most of the da Vinci’s works such as the drawing of the ideal Vitruvian Man contains these ancient principles. Da Vinci’s work implies that “the geometry of human proportion should be the basis of architectural proportion, and the ideal building is a reflection of the geometry of the ideal man”. The same notion was also believed by the great ancient architectures such as