This page discusses Vitruvius's observations on human body proportions and their significance in architecture. Vitruvius notes that a person's extended arms and height are equal, demonstrating the body's symmetry. The text further describes dividing the body into sections for measurement, emphasizing proportions from the head to the feet, and dividing the face into three parts.
16 METHOD FOR LEARNING
Proportions according to Vitruvius.
Vitruvius is the oldest author known to us who addressed the proportion of the human body; he even claims that architecture has derived all its rules and measurements from those of the human body. He is the first among those whose writings have reached us to note that when a person extends their arms and hands, they have the same length from the fingertips of one hand to the other as from the top of their head to the soles of their feet. By placing a compass point on the navel and making them hold their arms extended and legs apart, one can see it as the center of a circle, with the circumference touching the tips of the fingers and the soles of the feet.
He divides the entire human body into ten sections, from the head's top to the feet (including the head's part from the hairline to the bottom of the chin as one section). He also adds that the entire head should be one-eighth of the whole body; the hand should be one-tenth, meaning a face's length; from elbow to fingertip is a quarter of the whole body; the foot is one-sixth. The face is divided into three equal parts: the first is from the chin to the nostrils; the second, from the nostrils to the middle of the eyebrows; and the last, from the eyebrows to the hairline.