L'uomo vitruviano di Leonardo da Vinci, Rudolf Wittkower e L'Angelus Novus di Walter Benjamin

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This article revaluates Rudolf Wittkower's interpretation of the significance of the Vitruvian man in his influential book “Architectural principles in the age of humanism” and argues that for Vitruvius and for Renaissance architectural theorists the figure was a metaphor of a technical tradition reflecting the importance of geometry, proportion, and measurement for architecture; that for Leonardo, the Vitruvian Man (Venice, Accademia) was the result of anthropomorphic studies (1487-1490); and that Wittkower, influenced by the German tradition that saw the history of architecture as a history of ideas, failed to understand that the figure was a metaphor for geometry and measurement. Instead he made a metaphysical myth of it. He did so in reaction to the irrationality of fascism, and contrasts Walter Benjamin's comments on Paul Klee's Angelus Novus (Jerusalem, Museum of Jerusalem).