A Photo Every Day from the Sunshine Coast - Australia

Saturday 26 March 2016

Neutered!


It's odd how familiar things are instantly recognisable, no matter how badly corrupted they may be.  Vitruvian man without the manly bits, and so the square within which that part of the anatomy is centred becomes superfluous.  Without the square, presumably copyright issues are avoided, so no nasty fights with Leonardo's estate or Vitruvius' family will follow!

Nit picking though we are, we still recognise the intent.
Leonardo’s famous drawings of the Vitruvian proportions of a man’s body first standing inscribed in a square and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle provides an excellent early example of the way in which his studies of proportion fuse artistic and scientific objectives. It is Leonardo, not Vitruvius, who points out that ‘If you open the legs so as to reduce the stature by one-fourteenth and open and raise your arms so that your middle fingers touch the line through the top of the head, know that the centre of the extremities of the outspread limbs will be the umbilicus, and the space between the legs will make and equilateral triangle’ (Accademia, Venice). 
Caloundra

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

www.citydailyphoto.org
SHARE:

2 comments

Linda said...

Somehow this looks obscene while the original looks scientific.

William Kendall said...

I agree with Linda.

Blogger Template Created by pipdig