Why is it called the Vitruvian Man?

About 1490 Leonardo da Vinci drew a figure of a nude man with the arms and legs in two positions: one in which the hands and feet touch the boundaries of a square and another in which they touch the perimeter of a circle. The drawing is held in the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, where it is titled Study of the proportions of the human body. But the artwork is more popularly known as the Vitruvian Man. The term Vitruvian comes from Vitruvius, the Roman architect and engineer whose treatise De architectura (1st century bce; “On Architecture”) partially inspired the drawing.

In De architectura Vitruvius proposed that the human body could fit perfectly inside a circle and a square. He wrote that if a man were to lie flat on his back with arms and legs extended, his fingers and toes would touch the circumference of a circle, with his navel at the center. Vitruvius also observed that, because the height of the human body is the same measurement as the length of its outstretched arms, the human figure is comparable to a perfect square, whose sides are of equal measurement. However, Vitruvius’s treatise did not include illustrations, and in the 15th and 16th centuries several individuals, including architects Fra Giovanni Giocondo, Cesare Cesariano, and Francesco di Giorgio, attempted to illustrate Vitruvius’s ideal human. Many of their drawings placed the circle inside the square or vice versa, thereby distorting the figure’s torso or limbs.

Leonardo probably did not have direct knowledge of Vitruvius’s treatise, which at the time was available primarily in Latin, a language in which he had only some literacy. Instead he studied the proportions of the human body through his own research, measuring numerous young men to gather empirical data. Leonardo then incorporated these findings into his drawing, which deviated from other depictions by offsetting the square from the circle so that the shapes align only at the bottom. His decision to place the figure in two superimposed positions also offered a unique solution to the problem of fitting a human within both a circle and a square. Leonardo’s drawing thus not only manages to illustrate Vitruvius’s ideals but also reflects his own studies and interpretations.