The Vitruvian Man
Friday, 1st August 2008 by Rob
The Vitruvian Man (Wikipedia) was drawn around 1487 by Leonardo Da Vinci, and has since become not only the most famous of Da Vinci's works, but also one of the most famous images ever created. The drawing depicts a male nude in two superimposed positions within a square and a circle - the archetypal 'perfect man'. Da Vinci was a talented anatomical artist, and was apparently rather partial to regularly cutting up corpses to help hone his skills.
In fact the Vitruvian Man is more than just a pretty picture - it's also an extremely clever mathematical triumph, as it correctly relates the man's proportions to historic measurements, such as the foot (six of which add up to his height), the cubit, hand and fathom. The complexity of the design will forever ensure that no overly-ambitious artist attempts to re-create it on Google Earth using the medium of "crop maze".
Oh. Damn.
To give them their due credit, the people responsible for this German crop maze have done a pretty amazeing job - although, putting my ruler and pedantry skills into action showed that the "square" is more like 80 x 83m... and the circle is a bit wobbly compared to the original... but the positioning of the navel exactly in the centre is impressive!
This is actually the 2001 version of the town's annual hemp labyrinth tradition, which in the past has seen a particularly spectacular map of Europe, a portrait of Albert Einstein and a tribute to the 2004 Athens Olympics. You can see aerial photos of them all at the maze's website.
Thanks to godlike.
hey – where’s Malta on that map of Europe!
Who is Malta?
It’s worth taking a look at the galleries of ground-level photos on their website too. The mazes look quite menacing! The only people who get to see similar mazes in the UK are the police when they raid someone’s attic!
The use of the Vitruvian man in a maze is a clever reference to late fifteenth century spirituality – see Prof Craig Wright’s The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology and Music. He’s Yale’s Professor of Early Music.
this is very interesting!
http://members.home.nl/robtenberge/schema/animatie.html
http://www.robtenberge.nl/rob.html
http://www.robtenberge.nl/animatie
http://www.robtenberge.nl/animatie2
http://www.robtenberge.nl/animatie3 http://www.robtenberge.nl/animatie4 http://www.robtenberge.nl/animatie5
Vitruvian man 2 = Rob ten Berge