Yesterday, I wrote about how my kinesphere looked different from the ideals of Vitruvius, iconized through the drawing Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. In particular, my legs and arms do not fit within a circle like in Leonardo’s painting.
My kinesphere looks different from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
The Wikipedia page lists a quite extensive description of the ideal measurements of a man:
… the measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner, that is 4 fingers make a palm, 4 palms make a foot, 6 palms make a cubit, 4 cubits make a man, 4 cubits make a footstep, 24 palms make a man and these measures are in his buildings. If you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by 1/14 of your height and raise your arms enough that your extended fingers touch the line of the top of your head, let you know that the center of the ends of the open limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle.
The length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of the man. From the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of the man. From below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of the man. From above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of the man. From above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man. From the chest to the head is a quarter of the height of the man. The maximum width of the shoulders contains a quarter of the man. From the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of the man; the length of the hand is one-tenth of the man. The virile member is at the half height of the man. The foot is one-seventh of the man. From below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the man. From below the knee to the root of the member is a quarter of the man. The distances from the chin to the nose and the hairline and the eyebrows are equal to the ears and one-third of the face.
That is quite a detailed account and it would be interesting to hear if anyone has actually done systematic research into these proportions. I don’t have time to check it in detail, but, for the fun of it, I asked CoPilot to assist me in writing a Python script to analyze a photo using Vitruvius’ measurements. The script is now available on my GitHub page and provides measurements of some core features:
- Head to Body: Head height should be 1/8 of total height
- Face to Body: Face height should be 1/10 of total height
- Navel Ratio: Navel should be positioned 5/8 from the feet
- Foot to Body: Foot length should be 1/6 of total height
I tried it on a screenshot from my kinesphere video, which gave me this result:
The script is based on the pose estimation from MediaPipe, using the following coordinates:
- Head measurements: Eyes, nose for head top estimation
- Body structure: Shoulders, hips, ankles for total height
- Extremities: Heels and foot indices for foot length
This is obviously a very simplified approach and I would be curious to hear if anyone has implemented something better. Still, I find it interesting to see how we can combine (literally) ancient knowledge (and ideals) with contemporary technologies. Feel free to test the code yourself and let me know if you make improvements.