Susan Dorothea White Bibliography

Extract: The text that accompanies the drawing, written in the mirror script characteristic of Leonardo's secret notes, lists a number of facts about the relative sizes of the body parts. These include rules such as the span of the outstretched arms being equal to a man's height (a point made by the square in the drawing), the distance from hairline to chin being a tenth of a man's height, the distance from elbow to the tip of the hand being a quarter of a man's height, the length of a foot being a sixth of the man's height, the length of an ear being a third of the length of a face, and so on. There are thirteen rules in all. They are not original to Leonardo, but come rather from the Roman architect Vitruvius, who set out these rules in the first century BC. In his honour, Leonardo's illustration of these rules is usually called 'Vitruvian Man'. As the modern anatomical artist Susan Dorothea White has pointed out by her pastiche drawing Sex change for Vitruvian Man, essentially the same rules also apply to the bodies of women.