Somewhere along the way while learning to sculpt people, I became fascinated with the concepts of “Canons of Proportion” and the “Ideal Figure” which are ideas that nearly all books on figurative drawing and figurative sculpting discuss. I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching the history of these concepts, which is fascinating. Knowing how they developed and why make them easier to understand and effectively use. Surprisingly, it's not that easy to find detailed information about them, especially on the web, so I thought I’d write a “Cliff Notes” version for those who might be interested.

Both the "Ideal" and "Canons of Proportions" are unusual concepts, but they are important ones for a figurative artist to understand. An “ideal” figure is a theoretical person whose proportions are mathematically regular. A "Canon of Proportions" sets out the rules that define the "Ideal". Now, people come in all shapes and sizes, and none of the “rules” in any Canon are absolute; in fact, even an accurate canon probably does not apply completely and perfectly to even a single real person, but the proportions of the majority of people fall within a fairly narrow range, so these two concepts work really well as a set of guidelines to help us place and size the various parts of the body so that they look correct and like they all go together.

Going back at least as far as the Third Dynasty of Egypt, which ended around 2610 BCE, there have been attempts to map out a mathematical basis for the proportions of the human body. The basic idea here, is that within a certain amount of variance, all people conform to certain mathematical rules. Canons of Proportion state such things as the fact that one body part is the same length as another, or that one part of a body is a certain percentage of the length of another part. Canons of Proportion typically define midpoints of the body and a number of measurements that can be used to check the proportions of a drawing or sculpture.

The Egyptian Canon of Proportion

The ancient Egyptians were the first ones that we know created a system that can be considered a Canon of Proportion. They used a grid system to check the proportions of their drawings and sculptures of people; the grid consisted of a certain number of square grid units; the size of the grid units could be varied to change the size of the final artwork. In the Egyptian Canon, the height of a person was generally eighteen grid units measured from their hairline (not measured from the top of the head as we do today) to the bottom of their feet, a unit which some art historians speculate was based on the length of the middle finger, although there is no hard evidence to support this. According to the Egyptian cannon, the face was supposed to be two squares tall, the distance from the neck to the knees ten squares, and the distance from the knees to the sole of the foot six. Later dynasties refined this system of proportions by lengthening the torso and the neck, but this basic Canon of Proportion continued to be used for thousands of years in Egypt with few other changes, and the Egyptians were particularly strict about using it, which is one of the factors that makes Egyptian art so recognizable.

Although later work would show that the proportions used by the Egyptians were flawed in terms of defining the proportions of real people, the very idea of defining proportions and using grids was revolutionary and a major step forward in the accurate depiction of the human body in art. The use of a grid of arbitrary sized units allowed the Egyptians to create art in any scale and have it always match the same proportions, so a thirty-foot tall statue and a small glyph or carving would look identifiably the same. The concept of mathematically defined proportions and the use of grids to enlarge art are both techniques that are still used today.

On the left is the Egyptian grid-based Canon of Proportion as it would have been used during the Third Dynasty. On the right is a more modern rendition of the Egyptian Canon (also called the Canon of Lepsius) from "The Proportions of the Human Body" by Bertram C.A. Windle (1892)

Unfortunately, the Egyptian Canon of Proportion did not take into account the possibility of any individual variation, nor did it recognize the fact that a child’s proportions are radically different from those of an adult, which resulted in a lot of early Egyptian artwork that seems very odd to our modern eyes because the children are drawn and sculpted as if they were just little adults, and everybody is the same build; there are no fat or short or tall people whatsoever in ancient Egyptian art, and no way to identify the age of the subject apart from their size relative to other figures in the same work of art.

The Pharaoh Pepi II and his mother. Notice that Pepi is depicted as smaller than his mother, but conforms to the same adult proportions. Image by Keith Schengili-Roberts, used with permission.

The Greek Canons of Proportion

By this time, there was already trade across the Mediterranean Ocean and, at some point, the Greeks picked up the idea of using mathematically defined human proportions from the Egyptians. At first, the Greeks adopted the Egyptian system with little change and as a result, early Greek sculptures had a very similar feel to Egyptian artwork.

Early Greek Kouros sculptures were clearly influenced by the Egyptian style and were proportioned and posed similarly to the the earlier Egyptian figures.

Over time, however, the Greek artists began to experiment, and eventually created their own canon, commonly referred to as (strangely enough), the Greek Canon of Proportion. Instead of continuing to base their canon on an arbitrary grid, they switched to using a part of the human anatomy as the unit by which the rest of the body would be measured. The part of the body they chose was the head, and this idea is still used today. All of the modern Canons of Proportion use the height of the head as their basic unit of measurement, although other measures, including the width of the head and the length of the palm are still occasionally used.

The word “canon”, in fact, is derived from the Greek word “canon” which means “rule”, and its use in this context is probably attributable to a Greek sculptor named Polykleitos who lived around 450 BCE, and is one of the most important sculptors of antiquity. Polykleitos created a sculpture that he called “Canon” (also called “Doryphoros”) in order to support his published theory that the human body was seven heads tall and mathematically regular.

A Roman copy of Polykleitos’ “Canon” or "Doryphoros".

Polykleitos was a very influential sculptor: He was one of the first Greek sculptors to establish a school and have a following of student sculptors. Because of his influence, his theories were widely accepted and used, and his published proportions soon replaced the Egyptian Canon in Greece. The Greek Canon, based on Polykleitos' work, states that a person is a total of seven heads tall for men, the same or a little less for women.

Later, a second Greek Canon arose which stated that when sculpting a god or goddess, they should be created as eight heads tall to gave them a more imposing look and to keep them from ever looking physically inferior to mortals. As we’ll discuss in the next installment, the concept of multiple canons is still used today, although it’s no longer used primarily to differentiate mortals from gods, but rather to vary how imposing or heroic a figure looks, and also to vary the apparent age of the figure.

You will quite often see people describe "Polycleitos' proportions" as a figure that is eight heads tall. These people are actually describing Vitruvian proportions, as you'll see in a little bit. Though Polykleitos' writings do not still exist, his canon was widely used for hundreds of years and was recorded in many places as detailing a figure of seven heads tall. If you click on the image of "Canon" above, you'll see that Polycleitos himself used seven heads when constructing the Doryphoros, which was sculpted to accompany his published canon as proof of its correctness.

The Greek Canons were closer to the actual proportions of the human body than was the earlier Egyptian Canon. This fact, combined with other innovations of the time, such as the introduction of more dynamic poses where the weight is unevenly distributed between the legs (called contrapposto poses), allowed Greek figurative art to become much more interesting and far more realistic looking than the earlier Egyptian figurative art.

Man with Helmet attributed to Phidias from around 44 BCE; notice the more dynamic pose and more realistic anatomy than was present in the earlier picture of the Kouros.

The Roman (Vitruvian) Canon of Proportion

The Romans were exceptionally good at borrowing ideas they liked from other cultures, and were especially fond of borrowing ideas from their neighbors, the Greeks, and they did this with the idea of Canons of Proportion. The Roman Canon of Proportions is essentially the same as the Greek Canons and is also based on the height of the human head. However, it cannot be said that the Romans did not contribute their fair share to the evolution of Canons of Proportion. The most noticeable thing that they did was to start using the Greek proportion for gods as the standard proportion for all figures. That is to say, eight heads tall became the standard measure of the human figure in Roman art for all adult subjects. But their contributions do not end there, thanks primarily to an architect named Vitruvius.

Not a lot is actually known about Vitruvius for certain, but he wrote the oldest surviving treatise on Roman architecture titled De Architectura. Now why, you’re probably wondering, would an architect and a book about architecture have anything to do with canons of human proportion? And that is a darn good question.

You see, the people of ancient Rome did not see the arts and sciences as being distinct disciplines. In fact, the Roman goddess Minerva was the goddess of both science and art. The Romans (and the Greeks before them) saw science and art as complementary and interrelated disciplines. Much of the architectural proportions used in Roman architecture, for example, were derived from nature, including many derived from the proportions of the human body. As a result of this, the proportions of the human body would have been considered very relevant in any treatise on architecture published at the time, and Vitruvius did, in fact, lay out a number of specific measurements about the proportions of the human figure in his book on architecture. For example, in section 3.13 of De Architectura he said:

The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes. It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure, will form a square.

Well, it’s not the easiest thing to read, but it does contain some very useful information and shows that the Romans took the concept of Canons of Proportion and broke it down into even smaller units that could be used to check a piece of artwork for accuracy.

Unfortunately, a few hundred years later, the Roman Empire collapsed, and much of their knowledge was lost. Vitruvius’ work was basically forgotten, and the idea of defined canons of proportions all but disappeared, at least in Europe, for almost a millennium.

Leonardo and the Renaissance

During the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, after a long period of relative stagnation in the arts in the West, there arose a renewed interest in mapping out the proportions of the human body as artists sought to reclaim a more realistic and naturalistic style during the period we now call the Renaissance. People such as Leone Battista Alberti and Albrecht Duhrer, among many others, began to rediscover the idea of mathematically defined human proportions and the notion of an “ideal” figure.

Drawings by Albrecht Durer mapping out human proportions in great detail were published in 1528 under the title "Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion".

Human proportions sketched by Michelangelo Buonorroti.

Vitruvius’ writings resurfaced around this time, and boy did his work excite a bunch of artists. Among the artists who discovered Vitruvius’ writings was a fellow named Leonardo da Vinci, who developed a very keen interest in mapping out the proportions of the human body. He filled pages and pages of sketchbooks with anatomical illustrations and writings. One of his most famous sketches is, in fact, commonly called The Vitruvian Man, and appears to be an illustration of Vitruvius’ section 3.13 from de Architectura.

Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. Notice the square and circle as described by Vitruvius in De Architectura

In addition to illustrating Virtruvius’ words about the enclosing circle and square, Leonardo also broke Vitruvius’ proportions down to an even finer level. The text surrounding the Vitruvian Man, which is written backwards, reads as follows:

• a palm is the width of four fingers
• a foot is the width of four palms
• a cubit is the width of six palms
• a man's height is four cubits (and thus 24 palms)
• a pace is four cubits
• the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height
• the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man's height
• the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man's height
• the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man's height
• the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is one-fifth of a man's height
• the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of a man's height
• the length of the hand is one-tenth of a man's height
• the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose is one-third of the length of the head
• the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face
• the length of the ear is one-third of the length of the face

Leonardo’s proportions (and, by extension, Vitruvius’) have been used by many artists over the course of the last several hundred years, and have been considered gospel by many for much of that time. The interesting thing is that Leonardo’s and Vitruvius’ proportions, which are still used today by artists and can still be found in books on the human figure, are completely wrong.

Now that I’ve just said that one of the most respected artists in all of history was wrong about one of the most fundamental aspects of his craft, it's time to end this article. Join me next time when I explain just how and why Da Vinci and Vitruvius were wrong; I'll also be discussing the modern use of Canons of Proportions.

As a teaser, I'll leave you with this little diagram, and remind you that the first line of section 3.13 of De Architectura reads The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body.... Click for a larger image.