The Vitruvian Man – a famous drawing by Rennaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci in 1490 – depicts a nude male figure with his arms and legs spread inside both a circle and a square
A geneticist believes he has cracked the real Da Vinci Code in connection with one of the master painter’s artworks that has stumped experts for 500 years.
Five centuries ago, Rennaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci scribbled down his vision of what the perfectly proportioned male body would look like. Known as the Vitruvian Man, the simple sketch is considered one of the most important anatomical drawings in the world.
But its references to art, maths and the human body have remained a mystery to scientists for years. London-based dentist and trained geneticist Dr Rory Mac Sweeney believes he has the answer to how the Italian master placed the male in perfect proportions inside both a square and a circle.
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He said the key to unlocking the geometric code is the triangle that sits between the man’s legs, which da Vinci explained himself in manuscripts that came with the sketch.
Rather than a random shape, it corresponds to Bonwill’s triangle – which is also used in dental anatomy to measure the optimal performance of the human jaw.
But having been drawn hundreds of years before the birth of modern science, it seems incredible to suggest he understood the ideal design of the human body back then, according to Dr Sweeney.
The triangle used to construct the Vitruvian produces a specific ratio between the size of the other shapes, 1.634. This ratio is incredibly close to the “special blueprint number”, which appears in nature and is said to be used to construct the most-efficient structures, like the human jaw, human skull, or the atomic structure of crystals.
“We’ve all been looking for a complicated answer, but the key was in Leonardo’s own words,” Dr Sweeney, a graduated of the School of Dental Science at Trinity College in Dublin.
“He was pointing to this triangle all along. What’s truly amazing is that this one drawing encapsulates a universal rule of design.
“It shows that the same “blueprint” nature uses for efficient design is at work in the ideal human body.
“Leonardo knew, or sensed, that our bodies are built with the same mathematical elegance as the universe around us.”
He considers the artowkr a piece of “scientific genius that was centuries ahead of its time”.