The Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form

The Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form is now also available at Amazon.com.

The Art Student's Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form

This is a description of the book from a page of the study of Human Proportions through the ages: Proportionslehre from the Luitpold-Gymnasium München:

"Leonardo illustrated one of the most significant proportion lessons of the Renaissance, "De Divina Proportione", by the mathematician Luca Pacioli. Also Dürer based his "Four Books of Human Proportions" on Vitruvius, whose scheme he refined. All these proportions systems go from the human body as unit and define its parts as a ratio of the whole.
Undoubtedly one of the first to deviate from this thinking was the Court Sculptor to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, J.G. Schadow. In "Polykleitos or Guide to the Proportions of the Human Form ," he uses the Inch, an absolute measure which is outside the body to divise a system of measurement that doesn't rely on ratios. In addition, he is one of the first to publish an interest in the growth of the body. This leaves the teaching of proportion to the area of artistic interest and creates theoretical basis as for the normalization of clothing sizes which are necessary in the industrial production of clothing."






"De Divina Proportione", by the mathematician Luca Pacioli, German translation.


Albrecht Durer: Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, selected images.