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CONCLUSION: VITRUVIAN MAN AND VIRTUOUS WOMAN A RETROSPECTIVE ON THE HOMO BENE FIGURATUS THROUGH LEONARDO DA VINCI AND HARMONIA ROSALES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2024
Extract
On September 16, 2017, the then-thirty-three-year-old Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales presented her oil painting Virtuous Woman at her first art gallery exhibition, called ‘Black Imaginary To Counter Hegemony (B.I.T.C.H.)’, at the Simard Bilodeau Contemporary in downtown Los Angeles. The work is based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous visualization of Vitruvius’ description of the homo bene figuratus, that is, of the ‘ideal’ or ‘well-formed’ human being on whose symmetry and proportions the construction of temples should be modeled (Vitr. De arch. 3.1; fig. 5.3). Rosales retains the presentation of a nude human figure in an interlocking square and circle on a background covered in handwriting. Yet Rosales’ rendition of the lettering is even less easily legible than the Italian paraphrases of, and expansions upon, Vitruvius’ Latin that the left-handed Leonardo had written in mirrored script around his sketch. Moreover, Rosales’ painting fills not the page of a book, but a large canvas damaged at the edges and marked by red-orange blemishes. Most importantly, the person at the center is no longer the stern and, to a modern viewer, White-presenting man of da Vincian fame. Instead, she is a Black woman (fig. 7.1).
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Footnotes
I would like to thank Elena Giusti, Erin M. Hanses, and Ramus’ anonymous referees for their numerous helpful comments, which have much improved this article. I am also grateful for the stimulating conversations I have had with Giovanna Laterza and all participants in the homo bene figuratus workshop, and to Helen Morales for securing the image rights to Harmonia Rosales’ Virtuous Woman.
References
1. For Rosales and her work, see www.harmoniarosales.art. Accessed December 28, 2022.
2. The Latin text is taken from Granger (1931). All translations are my own.
3. For the details of Leonardo's design, see Isaacson (2017), 140–59.
4. Blackmon (2017).
5. For recent discussions of race, in particular, as a social construct rather than a biological reality, see Mukherjee (2016); Rutherford (2017); and Saini (2019). To account for the fact that race, notwithstanding its real impact on human lives, is an artificially constructed marker of identities, I capitalize the first letters of racial designations throughout this essay. Cf. Appiah (2020).
6. For the term intersectionality, see Combahee River Collective (1977); Crenshaw (1989). For its applicability to De architectura, cf. Kim (2022).
7. www.harmoniarosales.art/theartist. Accessed December 28, 2022.
8. For these practices and their place in Rosales’ work, see Padilla Peralta (2022); Pérez (2022); Rosales (2022).
9. Rosales develops this theme more directly in her painting I Exist, likewise part of B.I.T.C.H., where she depicts a crucifixion scene with only Black women as participants.
10. Rosales (2022).
11. www.harmoniarosales.art/theartist. Accessed December 28, 2022.
12. Cf. Williams (2016), 238f., who notes that Vitruvius uses the ambiguously gendered homo four times in the passage and in preference to such terms as uir, uirilis, mas, or masculus. Similar observations apply to Vitruvius’ ‘anthropology’ (De arch. 2.1), where the topic is the development of homines in general, rather than of men and/or women in particular (Williams [2016], 237).
13. Williams (2016), 239.
14. McEwen (2003), 157–60.
15. Riggsby (2016), 286 n.7.
16. The noun uenustas with its feminine connotations anticipates this shift even in the description of the Doric column.
17. Milnor (2008), 97.
18. For De arch.'s embeddedness in the literary discourses of the late republic and early empire, see also and especially McEwen (2003); Romano (2016); Nichols (2017); and Oksanish (2019).
19. See Milnor (2008), 94–139, and Williams (2016). The latter discusses Vitruvius’ description of Artemisia of Halicarnassus (De arch. 2.18.14–16) as the exception that proves the rule. On Artemisia, see now Kim (2022).
20. See most recently Oksanish (2019), 77–88, for the historical inaccuracies Vitruvius introduces into the relevant narratives in order to better serve his rhetorical objectives.
21. Milnor (2008), 94–139, esp. 109–14.
22. Nichols (2017), 30–2.
23. Contrast the focus, in Leonardo's sketch, on ‘man's regenerative capacity, his position as both an agent and a result of procreation’ (Merrill in this issue, my emphasis).
24. As Vitruvius himself had put it, ‘the precise center of the body, by nature, is the navel’ (corporis centrum medium naturaliter est umbilicus, 3.1.3).
25. Purcell (1983), 155f.
26. Nichols (2017), 42–82; cf. also 180–94 and Baldwin (1990).
27. For examples of banausic prejudice against architects, see the parody of the architectus Cyrus at Cic. Att. 2.3.2 or the evaluation of different professions at Off. 1.150f. When Vitruvius in book one famously models the encyclopedic training of the architect on the similarly expansive education of the orator, he might, as it were, be seen as using Cicero against Cicero, employing De or. to counter Att. and Off. Pace Oksanish (2016), 119–43.
28. Padilla Peralta (2020), 64.
29. Granger (1931), 2:xvii f.; Baldwin (1990), 430.
30. Nichols (2017), 43; Oksanish (2019), 32 n.5. Zucca (2009), 103f., tentatively dates the inscription to the late-Augustan or early-Tiberian era, which would be a bit too late for Cerdo to be the author of De architectura.
31. One wonders how Vitruvius’ callous observations regarding the decreased monetary value of enslaved pregnant women (2.9.1) relate to his own legal status. Did he experience the slave markets from the perspective of the enslaved, or of the enslavers, or of both at different points in life?
32. See esp. Ruffel and Soubiran (1962) in response to Thielscher (1961).
33. Zucca (2009), 97–101.
34. Zucca (2009), 101.
35. Ruffel and Soubiran (1962), 174–6.
36. See again Baldwin (1990).
37. e.g., Plaut. Poen. 1112f.; ps.-Verg. Moretum 33; Manilius 4.728–31; Seneca, De ira 26.3. On the depiction of Scybale in the Moretum, see Haley (1993) and (2009). For the Roman comic evidence, see Hanses (forthcoming). Cf. also Cic. Scaur. 19 with Čulík-Baird and Hanses (2024).
38. Snowden (1970), (1983).
39. Haley (2009), 27.
40. Murray (2021), 137, emphasis mine. Cf. Thompson (1989) and Dee (2003/2004).
41. See Thompson (1989), 101–4; Isaac (2004), 83–5; Romano (2016), 349–51; Kennedy (2018) for Vitruvius’ theory of environmental determinism, its Greek roots, and later receptions.
42. On a related note, a broad selection of ancient sources—ranging from Greek vase painting to Roman love poetry—employ dark skin tones to indicate men and masculine traits, while light ones point to women and feminine attributes. In these contexts, references to skin color gradations could be used to undercut or to prop up individuals, but the primary reference was to their conformity with gender norms, not to regional origins. A recent overview of the evidence is at Whitmarsh (2018). See also and esp. Eaverly (2013) for Egyptian influences on Greek practices.
43. Tusc. 4.31: corporis est quaedam apta figura membrorum cum coloris quadam suauitate eaque dicitur pulcritudo (‘There is a certain proper form of the limbs combined with a certain sweetness of skin colour, and this is called beauty’); cf. also Tusc. 5.46: color suauis; Opt. Gen. 8: suauitas coloris. For color prejudice in Cicero, see Čulík-Baird (2022) and Čulík-Baird and Hanses (2024).
44. Thompson (1989), 101–4; Caviness (2008); Heng (2018), esp. 181–257.
45. See n.41 above.
46. Compare, again, Merrill in this issue on Christian resonances in Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.
47. Isaacson (2017), 157.
48. Mercado (2018), 156. Discussing this artistic decision as a decolonizing move, Elizabeth Pérez (2022) notes ‘the exception of the divine twins, or Ibeji, who are shown as having albinism’.
49. Nichols (2017), 63–8; Oksanish (2019), 144–84.
50. Laterza (2018).
51. Laterza (2018) notes that this shift involves a redefinition on the part of Vitruvius of the noun uirtus (‘manliness’). This, of course, is the very term that is echoed in the title of Rosales’ painting in the further act of reclaiming and refocusing that I discussed above.
52. On the comparative neglect of the Middle Ages in studies of Vitruvius’ reception—admittedly evident also in these papers—see Verbaal (2016).
53. Padilla Peralta (2022).