page_title: Vitruvius
section_title: Proportions of man
hierarchical_section_title: Vitruvius / De architectura / Proportions of man
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Der vitruvianische Mensch. Proportionsschema der menschlichen Gestalt nach Vitruv. (Leonardo da Vinci 1485/90, Venedig, Galleria dell' Accademia) العربية: رجل فيتروفيوس وفقا لرسم ليوناردو دافنشي (1485-1490 ، البندقية, متحف الاكاديمية English: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice (1485-90) Català: Home Vitruvià, Leonardo da Vinci (1485-1490, Venècia, Galeria de l'Acadèmia) Español: Hombre de Vitruvio (Homo cuadratus), Leonardo da Vinci. (1485-1490). Venecia: Galería de la Academia Français&#160;: L'Homme de Vitruve, Léonard de Vinci (1485-1490, Venise, Galleria dell' Accademia) Plume, encre et lavis sur papier Magyar: Vitruvius-tanulmány Leonardo da Vinci vázlata, az emberi test méretarányait elemzi (1485-90, Velence, Galleria dell' Accademia) Italiano: L'uomo vitruviano di Leonardo da Vinci (1485/90, Venezia, Galleria dell' Accademia) Português: Homem de Vitrúvio por Leonardo da Vinci (1485-90, Veneza, Galleria dell' Accademia) Template:Pt(br) 中文: 达芬奇的素描《维特鲁威人》（1485年-1490年间作品，现藏于威尼斯的学院美术馆(Galleria dell' Accademia)） Русский: «Витрувианский человек» Леонардо да Винчи (1490, Галерея Академии, Венеция) Slovenščina: Razmerja človeškega telesa po Vitruviju, avtor Leonardo da Vinci (1485/90, Venedig, Galleria dell' Accademia) Українська: «Вітрувіанська людина» Леонардо да Вінчі (1490, Галерея Академії, Венеція)
context_page_description: Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, commonly known as Vitruvius, was a Roman author, architect, civil and military engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled De architectura. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of Vitruvian Man. He was also the one who, in 40 BCE, invented the idea that all buildings should have three attributes: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, meaning: strength, utility, and beauty. These principles were later adopted by the Romans.
  Little is known about his life, but by his own description Vitruvius served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the military offices. He probably served as a senior officer of artillery in charge of doctores ballistarum and libratores who actually operated the machines. As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It is possible that Vitruvius served with Caesar's chief engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus.
context_section_description: In Book III, Chapter 1, Paragraph 3, Vitruvius writes about the proportions of man:
  3. Just so the parts of Temples should correspond with each other, and with the whole. The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes. It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure, will form a square.
  It was upon these writings that Renaissance engineers, architects and artists like Mariano di Jacopo Taccola, Pellegrino Prisciani and Francesco di Giorgio Martini and finally Leonardo da Vinci based the illustration of the Vitruvian Man.
  Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion.
  The drawing itself is often used as an implied symbol of the essential symmetry of the human body, and by extension, of the universe as a whole.
caption: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, an illustration of the human body inscribed in the circle and the square derived from a passage about geometry and human proportions in Vitruvius' writings
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