Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Vitruvian Man (1498) is a paradox par excellence:
As one of the most famous works in art history, it is at once a testament to a historical view of humanity that, in our age of self-optimisation and self-quantification, could hardly be more relevant; it is the representation of an apparent deciphering of the sum and substance of humanity whilst simultaneously laying bare its inscrutability; it reciprocally reflects art and mathematics, the concrete with the abstract, the finite with eternity. And although the original is only exhibited every five years or so, it is nonetheless omnipresent in our everyday lives: We continuously encounter the Vitruvian Man on our Instagram-feeds, on health insurance cards, on Italian one-Euro coins – and in our Ashtanga practice.
But first, let’s take a brief look at the composition and concept behind this masterpiece: The double-stanced figure of an athletic man is situated at the centre of the picture. His outstretched limbs touch both a circle and a square, which frame his form. His navel constitutes the centre of both the human and geometric shapes. So far, so good – but: so what? What is the point of this geometric anthropology, which finds its continuation in the meticulous proportions of his body’s parts? Its point is nothing less than to portray man as the embodiment of the eternal geometry of the universe, as the microcosmic corpus of the macrocosmic order.
What might, in theory, sound quite compelling, soon proved to be an impossibility in practice: The Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC–15 AD), creator and namesake of the Vitruvianus, did not leave behind even a trace of a drawing of his homo bene figuratus, his well-proportioned human. The brilliant minds of the Renaissance – artists, architects, engineers – blunted their quills trying to sketch him, yet their designs never progressed beyond a collection of distorted homunculi. Finally, it was Leonardo – who else? – who succeeded in squaring the circle by deviating in a few details from Vitruvius’ specifications and incorporating his own mathematical, anatomical and aesthetic insights.
Returning to the practice of Ashtanga, we encounter a synthesized Virtruvianus most frequently within or between the standing postures following the Sun Salutations: between the trikoṇāsanas and the pārśva koṇāsanas, between two of the four pādottānāsanas, in the transition of pārśvottānāsana, and between the āsanas and samasthitiḥ. With view to the geometric leitmotif of this standing sequence, but also beyond it, at least two possibilities of practice can be derived from the ‘vitruvian-āsana’:
- Like Virtuvius’ devoted Renaissance scholars, the practitioner attempts to conform to an abstract and/or external form in order to embody a supposed ideal. A mere glance at the different body sizes, proportions and potentials that we encounter in our shared practice suffices to reveal this to be physiological nonsense. That such an idea can also become politically dangerous was proven by the fascist appropriation of a measurable human ideal – cf. Benito Mussolini’s Leonardo exhibition in Milan in 1939.
- The practitioner explores the harmonious interplay of forms and proportions within their own body. Here, too, the observation of no more than two practitioners reveals that each āsana takes on a different form in each person, and that even a single āsana inevitably changes over the course of a single person’s practice, both internally and externally. Like Leonardo da Vinci, we would therefore do well to test abstract and/or traditional theories in practice, to question them and, where necessary, to adapt them. Unless we decide to practise Homunculus Yoga, the measure of our practice cannot be compass and ruler, but the experiences and insights of each and every practitioner.
This seems to be a good place to pause – not least because the sun, the birds and the evening air are calling me outside ever more insistently. Yet, as so often happens at this very moment of writing, my inner critic is raising his hand to point out that I cannot possibly intend to conclude that humankind should regard itself as the measure of its own – or, at worst, of all – things. Of course not, I reply: It’s only logical that proportions can never arise solely from within themselves. Naturally, the person who practises yoga, who lives his or her life, must find their grounding within the physical and mental conditions given to them. Yet this person is always embedded within larger contexts: social and political, cultural and religious, abstract and concrete. This is precisely what Leonardo’s Vitruvianus symbolises: It is only through our own relationship with ourselves and with the whole that we will find our perfect posture as human beings. What more can there be to achieve in yoga? My inner critic seems, for the time being, to be appeased. Together we get up from my desk and stroll out into the evening sun.
Da Vinci, Leonardo: Uomo vitruviano. 1498, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice.