Dentist unveiled Da Vinci’s mystery over 500 years old?

The “Vitruvian man,” one of the most iconic drawings in the world, by Leonardo da Vinci has always brought a great deal of mystery. But Rory Mac Sweeney, a London dentist, may have finally revealed one of the secrets behind the work of the most important figure of the Renaissance. In an article published in the scientific journal Journal of Mathematics and the ArtsEnglish claims to have deciphered the geometric code hidden in the work, which portrays the exact proportions of the male human body fitted a circle and a square

The key to unraveling the mystery would be in the figure of a hidden equilateral triangle in the legs of Vitruvian man. For Mac Sweeney, the geometric figure is not random: besides being mentioned in original Da Vinci notes, it refers to the Bonwill triangle, anatomical reference used in dentistry to understand the ideal functioning of the jaw.

The argument presented that justifies the occult representation of the triangle is that there is an exact reason between the size of the square and the circle of drawing: 1.64. The number in question is close to the proportion widely found in nature, of 1.6333, which is associated with strong and efficient structures, such as: the arrangement of spheres, the proportions of the human skull and the atomic organization of certain crystals.

“We were looking for a complicated response, but Leonardo was already pointing to this triangle,” says Mac Sweeney, noting that his discovery reinforces that Da Vinci’s work represents an extraordinary scientific hypothesis, centuries ahead of the artist’s time, anticipating mathematical patterns that form the ideal design of the male human body.

The article concluded that the Renaissance artist used the equilateral triangle to resolve the geometric relationship proposed by Marco Vitrúvio, Roman architect.

Vitrúvius’s work points to the harmony of body proportions without offering a mathematical method that snaps into a circle and square.

A study of more than 64,000 people pointed out that although some parts of the modern human body are slightly larger than those estimated by Da Vinci, measures such as the groin, the width of the shoulders and the length of the thigh remain close to the proportions described in the Vitruvian man.

For more than five centuries, the geometric system used by the Italian artist to define the exact relationship between the circle and the square in his work remained a mystery.

“Leonardo’s explicit textual reference to an equilateral triangle on the legs of the figure provides its construction method and reveals the anatomical base for its proportional choices. The analysis shows that Leonardo’s equilateral triangle corresponds to the Bonwill triangle in dental anatomy – the fundamental geometric relationship that rules the ideal function of the human jaw,” says an excerpt from the article.