Image of the Week: Vitruvian Spring
© D. Yael Bernhard
Following last week's image, Creature of the Sun, here is another interpretation of the relationship of human and nature. But this time, my approach was completely different. I finished this painting yesterday, but the idea has been in my head ever since last fall, when I took a course on Italian Renaissance Art at Empire State College. I wanted to fill a lacuna in my knowledge of art history, and I wanted to cross-fertilize my own work as an artist. I was the only student in this special independent study – lucky me!
What an incredibly rich journey! From September to December, I devoured two thick textbooks, numerous web pages and slide shows, and a biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I learned about humanism, the new movement that was rising in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Not to be confused with humanitarianism, humanism moved away from a strictly religious divine reality toward a celebration of human existence on earth.
It was a time of warring city-states, new inventions, and much upheaval, including the Inquisition. Human rights did not yet exist in those times, and church and state were inseparable. Artists of the Renaissance had to tread carefully, for the Church was lord and patron of their work.
As part of this movement, a quest for divine proportions prevailed among intellectuals and nobles, philosophers, artists and architects. To quote one of my textbooks: "The humanist underpinnings of the notion that the circle was the ideal shape derived from [the architect] Vitruvius, who related the symmetry of man to the harmony of architecture. Leonardo's drawing Vitruvius Man depicts Vitruvius's view that if a man stands inside a circle and/or square with his hands and feet extended to the circumference, his naval will fall at the center." (Italian Renaissance Art by Laurie Schneider Adams).
I had to try this myself. I placed a tack in the center of the square canvas shown above, and used a string to draw a circle. Then I built a figure around this center naval, proportioned so that the outstretched fingertips and feet touched the circle. Lowered to a horizontal angle, these same arms determined the width of the square, which fell in precisely with the top of the man's head and the bottoms of his feet with legs vertical and together. It worked perfectly.
But for me, something was missing from Leonardo's drawing. Although he established a proportional relationship between human and divine geometry, he did not strive to harmonize with nature. In Leonardo's time, humankind had finally emerged from the long centuries when people were "torn by beasts," and had just begun its long ascent toward dominating nature. Five hundred years later, I wonder: are we ready to bring the organic forms of nature – trees and leaves, roots and mycelium, flowers and grasses – into that perfect, empty circle?
In the context of history, this budding new awareness to work with nature rather than against it is just beginning. Nowhere is this more evident than in our attitudes toward human health and the environment, both of which are degraded by drugs and toxins to the point of dysfunction. I like to imagine this springtime of new awareness! Like the trees and vegetation in Renaissance art, the two trees flanking this man are slender and stylized, bending in relation to him as he in turn reaches toward them with what I envision as a more responsive and humble humanism.
I listened repeatedly to Beethoven's 7th Symphony (Op. 92 in A major) as I worked on this painting, and tried to infuse the image with the rising cascade of violins, which to me sound like the triumph of spring over winter. It's a gentle triumph, tender as the tiny leaves that will soon emerge, just waiting for the touch of our fingertips – not like Copland's "Appalachian Spring," with its trumpets that herald the new life that bursts forth from the earth – also a feast for the ear, and the imagination.
May the new season bring with it a new outlook, and new beginnings!
Happy Spring to all –