JMS Pearce
Hull, England

Amongst Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) unrivalled masterpieces are the Mona Lisa (c. 1503), The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498), Salvator Mundi (c. 1499–1510), and the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490). All have been subject to countless commentaries and learned descriptions.1,2 Just as the fictional works of novelists often include (albeit subconsciously) aspects of their own personalities and life experiences, can an artist’s portraits be wholly devoid of their self-image?
Leonardo had a sound grounding in human and animal anatomy; he dissected around 30 human corpses in collaboration with Marcantonio della Torre, anatomist at Pavia. He composed the Vitruvian Man using calipers and compasses to make minute, accurate measurements and drawings of the human face, bodily proportions, postures, and movements (Fig 1).3 His abundant notes in mirror writing describe it as Le proporzioni del corpo umano secondo Vitruvio. Leonardo related it to studies of the treatise De Architectura of the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in the first century BC. He sought to relate symbolically the human form to the natural world: his cosmografia del minor mondo, a cosmography of the microcosm of the universe.2,4 It is a drawing on paper measuring 34.4 × 25.5 cm using pen and ink with a hint of watercolor wash. It is housed in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.
Self-portrait?
The face of the Vitruvian Man is expressive, with unmistakeable intelligence and character, which has led some authorities to suggest it is a self-portrait.5 Renaissance artists not infrequently used their own faces in studies and sketches. Leonardo was thirty-eight when he drew the Vitruvian Man, an age consistent with the face in his drawing. The face, especially the eyes and nose, bear certain similarities to his acknowledged self-portrait and drawings (Fig 2). The intense stare could be interpreted as that of someone looking in a mirror to draw a self-portrait. Leonardo, quoting Cosimo de’ Medici, once observed: “Every painter paints himself,” by which he implied this was a spiritual expression of selfhood rather than an exact self-portrait.

Christopher Tyler commented: “The Vitruvian Man is a natural choice as a self-portrait, cleaned of his likely beard. … The use of a realistic lion as a breastplate enhances the identification as a self portrait, being a visual pun [Leonardo] on his name.”5
The journalist Toby Lester in his book describes:
It’s an idealized self-portrait in which Leonardo, stripped down to his essence, takes his own measure, and in doing so embodies a timeless human hope: that we just might have the power of mind to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things. Think of the picture as an act of speculation, a kind of metaphysical self-portrait in which Leonardo—as an artist, a natural philosopher, and a stand-in for all of humanity—peers at himself with furrowed brow and tries to grasp the secrets of his own nature.6
The face also superficially resembles Leonardo’s lifelong, intemperate companion Salai (Gian Giacomo Caprotti) whom he painted and drew many times. Most writers including the eminent authority Martin Kemp argue that the Vitruvian Man is not a self-portrait, but a conceptual diagram of human proportion,1 representing Leonardo’s engagement with Vitruvian theory and the principles of geometry. Similarly, Carlo Pedretti, another da Vinci scholar, dismissed the idea of a self-portrait, emphasizing its symbolic and scientific purposes above any personal representation.7
Was Vitruvian Man a self-portrait? We shall never know.
References
- Kemp M. Leonardo da Vinci (2006); revised edition, Oxford University Press 2011.
- Clark K, Kemp M. Leonardo da Vinci: Revised Edition. London, Penguin Books, 1989.
- Pearce JMS. Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. Hektoen Int. Summer 2020.
- du Plessis, Alicia. The “Vitruvian Man” by Da Vinci – Famous Human Proportion Study. Art in Context, September 28, 2021. https://artincontext.org/the-vitruvian-man-da-vinci/.
- Tyler C. How did Leonardo Perceive Himself? Metric Iconography of da Vinci’s Self-Portraits. Proceedings of SPIE – The International Society for Optical Engineering. 2010;7527. 75271.
- Lester T. Da Vinci’s Ghost: The untold story of Vitruvian Man. Profile Books, 2011.
- Pedretti C. I disegni di Leonardo da Vinci e della sua cerchia nella. Biblioteca reale di Torino. Florence, 1990.
JMS PEARCE is a retired neurologist and author with a particular interest in the history of medicine and science.
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