The text compares the measurement of the human body to the dimensions of Noah's Ark, illustrating proportions in art and architecture. It discusses how proportions have been critical in the work of illustrious painters like Michelangelo and Raphael. The focus is on the artistic rules of proportion and their significance in historical artistic achievement.
NOTICE
"Noah's Ark: because it is said that God Himself taught Noah to build the ark, like the one who wisely built the machine of the world, all the perfections of which He brought together to the highest degree in man, whereby one is called the great world and the other the small world. That is why those who measured this small world divided the body into six feet, and the foot into ten degrees, and the degree into five minutes, which made the number of sixty degrees, or three hundred minutes, which they compared to as many geometric cubits, by which Noah's Ark was described by Moses. For just as the human body is three hundred minutes long, fifty wide, and thirty high, so the ark was three hundred cubits long, fifty wide, and thirty high." J.P. Lomazzi, on proportion, chap. XXX, page 83, same edition.
"The rule of proportions has been observed by the most excellent and illustrious painters who have been the splendor and light of our times, and have followed and carried forth the excellence of the proportions of the seven governors of the world, among whom the first, without exception, was Michelangelo Buonarroti; and after him, the prize for shaping the Venusian bodies, that is to say, by the proportion of Venus, was given to the great painter Raphael Sanzio of Urbino: the folares,
Translation Notes: "Cubits" refers to an ancient measurement unit based on the forearm length from the tip of the middle finger to the bottom of the elbow. "Venusian proportions" relate to ideals of beauty and symmetry inspired by the goddess Venus.