Leonardo's Vitruvian man

摘要

The catchpenny title is misleading: there are no Templars in this book, no conspiracies, and only one execution. The drawing - dimly reproduced on the cover — is Leonardo's famous (yes, arguably 'most famous') one, that of a naked man in both a square and a circle. As it is very delicate, it is kept locked up (and rarely shown) in the Accademia Gallery in Venice, but has been interminably emulated, caricatured, mangled and - as often - just reproduced. You may remember a version of it plastered all around London to advertise an employment agency called Manpower (who seem to have abandoned the logo when they went on-line), and you may well have handled it on the obverse of the troubled one-euro coin.