/
glass box aboard a climate controlled truck, accompanied by armed guards, all the way to the Louvre. Then the lawyers intervened. The loan was approved under the condition that the drawing be exposed with a maximum lu- minous intensity of 15 lux, after which it had to be stored in a dark room for a prolonged period of time in order to recover. The Vitruvian man is, thus, now on display for the hordes of visitors who will come to the Louvre to o er it“admiration”. But what does this drawing represent and why was such a fuss raised over lending it out? For the crea- tion of the work, which carries the full title“The Proportions of the Human Body According to Vitruvius”, Da Vinci drew inspiration from the writings of Vitruvius (circa 75-15 BC), the rst great Roman architect and engineer, architec- tural historian and o cer of the Roman army. In his work,“Ten Books on Architecture”, Vitruvius claimed that man contains within him all the perfections of the entire world, and that the ideal human body is character- ised by precisely de ned proportions between its height and individual parts, and that they also re ect ideal proportions in classical ar- chitecture. He then described in exceptional detail the proportions of one such well-con- structed man: “the distance from the chin to the top of the forehead should be a tenth of the whole height; the length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body, the fore- arm is one fourth,” and so on … Vitruvius’s descriptions of human propor- tions would have a profound e ect on Leon- ardo. If a man be placed on his back, writes Vitruvius, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses placed at his navel, the centre point, the ngers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumfer- ence of a circle described therefrom. A square can also be derived from the human body: the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head equal the measure of the out- stretched arms, with the breadth the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfac- es which are perfectly square. “It was a powerful image. But, as far as we know, nobody known made a serious and precise drawing according to those instruc- tions in the fteen centuries since Vitruvius composed his description. Then, around 1490, Leonardo and his friends set about working on a depiction of a man with his arms and
I talian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452- 1519) is often cited as a romantic exam- ple of a magni cently versatile artist, but he often deviated from that ideal himself. Above all, he identi ed himself as a swot for science, who devoted at least as much time to studying, theorising and construing as he did to creating art. He was a man who ignored and exceeded deadlines for ordered works almost until his last day. And that day was 2 nd May 1519. He passed away in the court of French King Francis I, and that’s the rea- son why a large percentage of his surviving works – which number fewer than 20 paint- ings – ended up in Paris’s the Louvre, and not in his native Italy. Franco-Italian tensions ensured that or- ganising a major retrospective exhibition in Paris was a real nerve-wracking undertaking. It is as though it’s not bad enough that the Lou- vre has an endless source of tourism indus- try gold in the form of the Mona Lisa, should France also pro t from works borrowed from Italy – it was as if that was asked by the Italia Nostra cultural heritage organisation when they tried to legally prevent the lending of the Vitruvian man drawing. The ve hundred and thirty-year-old drawing, which is in a very fragile condition, was to be transported from its place of resi- dence in Venice, across the Alps, in a sealed
Leonardo je iscrtao telo „izuzet- ne i nepotrebne lepote“, nastavlja dalje sa divljenjem Volter Ajzakson. „Svojim snažnim, ali intimnim pogledom i uvojcima kose, koje je voleo da crta, njegovo remek-de- lo prepliće u sebi ljudsko i božan- sko. Čini se da je čovek u pokretu... Vitruvijev čovek otelotvoruje trenu- tak kada se umetnost i nauka kom- binuju kako bi smrtnim umovima omogućile da se pozabave veči- tim pitanjima o tome ko smo i kako se uklapamo u veliki poredak uni- verzuma (...) Unutar kvadrata i kru- ga možemo da vidimo suštinu Leo- narda da Vinčija i suštinu nas samih dok stojimo goli na preseku zemalj- skog i kosmičkog“, zaključuje Aj- zakson. Ovaj crtež, rađen mastilom na papiru, širok je 25,4 centimetra i dug 35,5 centimetara. Leonardo ga je nacrtao oko 1490, kada je otprili- ke imao 38 godina. Toliko ima i čo- vek na slici. Uz opise savremenika da je Da Vinči imao divnu kovrdža- vu kosu i telo dobrih proporcija kao argument, neki naučnici tvrde da je Vitruvijev čovek njegov autoportret, dok drugi odbacuju tu teoriju.
Izložba Leonardo da Vinci u Luvru će trajati do 24. februara naredne godine The exhibition Leonardo da Vinci in Louvre will run until 24 th February next year
80 |
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator