vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius was a Roman architect in 1 BCE and authored the famous treatise on architecture entitled De Architectura. The treatise is broken into 10 different books, each dealing with aspects of architecture, city planning, and machines. His book was the authority on these subjects up through the Renaissance, and still has influences in modern architecture today.

It is in the beginning of Book III, in his discussion on the building of temples, where the concept of Virtruvian Man emerges:

Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man can be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are completely square.
(Marcus Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book III, Chapter 1, p 3)

Despite being a treatise on architecture, Vitruvius’ original work provides us with no actual images, apparently leaving it as an exercise for others.

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