“Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) famous drawings of the Vitruvian proportions of a man’s body first standing inscribed in a square and then with feet and arms outspread inscribed in a circle provides an excellent early example of the way in which his studies of proportion fuse artistic and scientific objectives. It is Leonardo, not Vitruvius (85-20 BC), who points out that ‘If you open the legs so as to reduce the stature by one-fourteenth and open and raise your arms so that your middle…
