Post # 089
The Vitruvian man
First, please watch this 3-minute video.
The Vitruvian man is a drawing, not a painting, but an ink-on-paper drawing, drawn around 1490, by the Italian genius painter, architect, scientist, mathematician, anatomist, engineer and cartographer - basically a polymath, Leonardo da Vinci. Along with the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, it is considered to be one of his masterpieces.
The drawing, which combines art with mathematics, represents the ideal human body proportions. Its inscription in a square and a circle comes from a description by the 1st century BC Roman architect Vitruvius - hence its name.
Leonardo da Vinci, goes on to explain what these ideal human body proportions are. I have hyperlinked another video for people who want to know more about the mathematics of human body. It is really fascinating. Please also try and read up on the Divine ratio, phi. All of this was touched upon mysteriously by Dan Brown in Da Vinci code.
What fascinated me about The Vitruvian man, other than its mathematics, was the spiritual aspects of the drawing. Let me explain in brief.
Encyclopædia Britannica states that Leonardo envisaged the Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe.
This concept relates so closely to the Sanskrit concept of Yatha Pinde, Tatha Brahmande, which means that the human body is a microcosm of the entire universe. Isn't the similarity uncanning?
Now, let's talk about the second half of the above video, where Neoplatonism and the hierarchy of life forms are discussed - starting with God at the top and ending with devil at the bottom. See how closely it relates to the Hindu concept of the 14 lokas, 7 above Bhuloka and 7 below. Like the Hindus believed, man could evolve across the lokas by evolution in his consciousness. Stunning similarities, conceptually, eh!
Like I said, those who are keen to understand the mathematics of the human body, can watch this 6-minute video. Those who aren't, can skip it.
Those who, like me, are awestruck by the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, can watch the beautiful 3-minute biographical video.