Della simmetria dei corpi umani, Venezia, Domenico Niccolini, coll. A.D.2.15, 1591

Accademia di Belle Arti, Firenze

The study of the human body during the Renaissance was divided into supporters of idealism over realism, and of geometry over anatomy. Unlike Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer never practiced dissection. He believed that because the anatomical approach fragmented the body, it stood in the way of a unitary vision of the figure. The geometric approach, on the other hand, grounded in the study of proportion, granted an overall picture. In his work Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion, which was published a year after his death, Dürer attempted to understand the exact measurements which govern the order of the human figure. In his view, only a mathematical knowledge of the body was the way to understanding its perfection.