Leonardo da Vinci Draws the Vitruvian Man

1490

In a Milan notebook, Leonardo drew a nude man with arms and legs extended inside a circle and square, illustrating Vitruvius's claim that the human body embodied ideal proportions. The drawing was private, a working diagram. It would become, five centuries later, the most reproduced image of Western humanism. The drawing became an enduring symbol of the Renaissance ideal that the human body was the measure of all things.