ORDERING SIGNS IN ART HISTORY: THE UNIQUE CASE OF THE VITRUVIAN PRINCIPLE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph by SETH GERRY In partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May, 2011 © Seth Gerry, 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82813-7 Our file Notre ritirence ISBN: 978-0-494-82813-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada ORDERING SIGNS IN ART HISTORY: THE UNIQUE CASE OF THE VITRUVIAN PRINCIPLE Seth Gerry Advisor: University of Guelph, 2011 Dr. Sally Hickson Although many scholars comment on important concepts in the history of western art in reference to visual clues or textual evidence, there is little attention paid to the individual communicative nature of text and image with respect to these ideas. This thesis is an investigation of the history of the Vitruvian Principle, a concept which proclaims that the proportionality of the human form can be applied to various macrocosmic ideas. This idea is documented visually in the iconic diagram of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (1487) and introduced originally in the text of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's De architectura (c. 15 BC). This thesis explains that the history of this concept is dictated by its historiography as much by its historiography as it is explained by primary source documentation. Through this methodological approach, it will be shown that the scholarship that constructs this history depends on divorcing text and image for the sake of simplistic analysis, a process which betrays an apparent selective ordering of textual and visual products in different historical periods of art production. Acknowledgement I would like to extend thanks and appreciation to all of those who assisted me with my research and completion of this thesis. Specifically, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sally Hickson, for her constant support and encouragement, as well as my thesis committee members, Dr. Susan Douglas and Dr. Andrew Sherwood. These three mentors have given me tremendous insight into complicated theoretical approaches in the discipline of art history, as well as the language with which to explain these approaches. Individually, they each made great contributions to the direction of my academic career, and for this I am grateful. I would also like to extend thanks to Dr. Jakub Zdebik who, in the early stages of this project, helped direct my attention to some of the best research material used in this thesis. Lastly, I would like to thank my kind parents, Andra and Brian Gerry, and the rest of my family for their moral support and encouragement, as well as Elisabeth Woyzbun for her diligent editing and referencing assistance. i Table of Contents Acknowledgement List of Figures Introduction 1-18 Chapter 1 19-43 Chapter 2 44-78 Conclusion 79-83 Works Cited 84 - 88 Appendix A-Images 89-90 Appendix B - The complete writings by 91 - 92 Leonardo da Vinci and Vitruvius on the Vitruvian Principle n List of Figures Figure 1 Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) Galleria dell'Accademia (Venice Italy), Pen and in diagram on paper Reproduced from the ARTstor Art History Survey Collection, Art Images for College Teaching. URL: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml Figure 2 Rene Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe, (1928-1929) Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles California), Oil on canvass Reproduced from ARTstor, Image I.D. mod5-091, Data © 2009 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. URL: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml Figure 3 Hildegard von Bingen, Universal Man, from the Liber divinorum operum (c. 1165) Biblioteca Statale (Lucca, Italy), Manuscript illumination Reproduced from The Picture Desk Limited Collection, Hildegard von Bingen's Liber divinorum operum, Data © Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS. URL: http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/IH164145.html Figure 4 Villard de Honnecourt, Page from a notebook: ars de geometria, Image XXXIII, (c. 1240) Bibliotheque nationale de France (Paris, France), Pen and Ink over lead-point diagram on paper Reproduced from the ARTstor Slide Gallery, Data: University of California, San Diego. URL: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml in INTRODUCTION My case study originates from the historical image of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) image of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1487), a diagram from the Italian Renaissance derived from Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's (c. 70 BC - c. 15 BC) De architectura libri decern from c. 15 BC (Fig. 1). In modern popular culture, the Vitruvian Man (or derivations of it) can be seen in company logos, icons for various fields of study and interest, and as a symbolic representation of geographic locations. The government of Italy, for example, made the Vitruvian Man the primary creative inscription on the back of its one-Euro coin (c. 1999) in order to embody the idea of the primacy of Italian culture in the history of Europe. The Vitruvian Man is also used by different organizations in the medical field, representing the physical excellence of the human form, a metaphorical icon of regimented health-plans, and an icon for homeopathic physical remedies such as acupuncture.1 Most recently, in the field of visual studies, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man has been identified in introductory textbooks as a definitive icon of scientific inquiry. This can be seen in terms of its use in marketing materials for organizations like the Human Genome Project, in which the Vitruvian Man is said to represent the "culmination of modern science in its potential for control over the human body."2 Simply described, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is the image of a nude man with his arms and legs spread-eagled, simultaneously inscribing, or being inscribed within, both the circumference of a perfect circle and the corners of a square. The drawing is accompanied by a set of notes which refer to sections of Vitruvius' De architectura on the application of the human form and the basic geometric shapes and ratios which can be derived from its proportions for 1 For a more complete list of applications of the image of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man in popular culture see "What has the Vitruvian Man Become," an online project for Professor Michael John Gorman's Course, STS 102: "Leonardo: Science, Technology, and Art" at Stanford University, (Fall 2002), http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/today.html 2 Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, 2n Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 375. 1 the purpose of perfecting architectural design.3 An ink-on-paper diagram with text, the sheet was originally a leaf in one of Leonardo's notebooks, compendia in which he habitually explored architecture, artistic practices, hydraulics, war machines, and many other fields of artistic and scientific studies. At the turn of the nineteenth century this page, separated from his notebooks, was housed in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice. As an isolated drawing, the Vitruvian Man has acquired considerable individual agency as an icon of Renaissance humanism representing, through its inscription of the human form as the measure of the eternal and unchanging geometric shapes of circle and square, the definitive expression from the traditional Western canon of history: "Man is the measure of all things."4 This statement summarizes the principal role of the Vitruvian Man as an icon in the history of art and the enduring power of the human form to act as a vehicle for the communication of cultural ideals. Not only does the Vitruvian Man appear as an icon and popular subject in the history of art, it stands in - at times - as an icon for the entire discipline of art historical studies. This is especially true in popular culture, in which the first clue for the scholarly protagonist in Dan Brown's wildly popular historical novel The Da Vinci Code (2003), is a grotesque reenactment of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, arguably defining the field of study on which The Da Vinci Code is based: a field of icons and symbols, the language of traditional art historical studies.