Artistic canons of body proportions



An artistic canon of body proportions (or aesthetic canon of proportion), in the sphere of visual arts, is a formally codified set of criteria deemed mandatory for a particular artistic style of figurative art. The word canon was first used for this type of rule in Classical Greece, where it set a reference standard for body proportions, to produce a harmoniously formed figure appropriate to depict gods or kings. Other art styles have similar rules that apply particularly to the representation of royal or divine personalities.

Ancient Egypt
In 1961, Danish Egyptologist Erik Iverson described a canon of proportions in classical Egyptian painting. This work was based on still-detectable grid lines on tomb paintings: he determined that the grid was 18 cells high, with the base-line at the soles of the feet and the top of the grid aligned with hair line, and the navel at the eleventh line. These 'cells' were specified according to the size of the subject's fist, measured across the knuckles. (Iverson attempted to find a fixed (rather than relative) size for the grid, but this aspect of his work has been dismissed by later analysts. ) This proportion was already established by the Narmer Palette from about the 31st century BCE, and remained in use until at least the conquest by Alexander the Great some 3,000 years later.

The Egyptian canon for paintings and reliefs specified that heads should be shown in profile, that shoulders and chest be shown head-on, that hips and legs be again in profile, and that male figures should have one foot forward and female figures stand with feet together.

Canon of Polykleitos
In Classical Greece, the sculptor Polykleitos (fifth century BCE) established the Canon of Polykleitos. Though his theoretical treatise is lost to history, he is quoted as saying, "Perfection ... comes about little by little (para mikron) through many numbers". By this he meant that a statue should be composed of clearly definable parts, all related to one another through a system of ideal mathematical proportions and balance. Though the Kanon was probably represented by his Doryphoros, the original bronze statue has not survived, but later marble copies exist. "Despite the many advances made by modern scholars towards a clearer comprehension of the theoretical basis of the Canon of Polykleitos, the results of these studies show an absence of any general agreement upon the practical application of that canon in works of art. An observation on the subject by Rhys Carpenter remains valid: "Yet it must rank as one of the curiosities of our archaeological scholarship that no-one has thus far succeeded in extracting the recipe of the written canon from its visible embodiment, and compiling the commensurable numbers that we know it incorporates.""

Canon of Lysippos
The sculptor Lysippos (fourth century BCE) developed a more gracile style. In his Historia Naturalis, Pliny the Elder wrote that Lysippos introduced a new canon into art: capita minora faciendo quam antiqui, corpora graciliora siccioraque, per qum proceritassignorum major videretur, signifying "a canon of bodily proportions essentially different from that of Polykleitos". Lysippos is credited with having established the 'eight heads high' canon of proportion.

Praxiteles
Praxiteles (fourth century BCE), sculptor of the famed Aphrodite of Knidos, is credited with having thus created a canonical form for the female nude, but neither the original work nor any of its ratios survive. Academic study of later Roman copies (and in particular modern restorations of them) suggest that they are artistically and anatomically inferior to the original.

Classical India
Various canons are set out in the Shilpa Shastras.

"There are different sets of proportions given in the Hindu Āgamas for the making of images. Each of these varies with the subject; for example, images of the three Supreme deities, Bramā, Vishnu and Śiva are required to be formed according to the set of proportions collectively called the uttama-daśa-tāla measurement; similarly, the malhyama-daśa-tāla is prescribed for images of the principal Śaktis (goddesses), Lakshmi, Bhūmi, Durgā, Pārvati and Sarasvati: the pancha-tāla, for making the figure of Gaṇapati, and the chatus-tāla for the figures of children and of deformed and dwarfed men. The term tāla literally means the palm of the hand, and by implication is a measure of length equal to that between the tip of the middle finger and the end of the palm near the wrist. This length is in all instances taken to be equal to the length of the face from the scalp to the chin. It is therefore usual to measure the total length in terms of the length of the face rather than in terms of the palm of the hand. This practice is followed also in the succeeding paragraphs. The reader would be inclined to believe that the phrases daśa-tāla, paṅcha-tāla and ēkatāl mean lengths equal to ten, five and one tāla respectively, but unfortunately this interpretation does not seem to agree with the actual measurements; for example, the total length of an image made according to the Uttama-daśa-ālc measurement is 124 aṅgulas, and the tāla of this image measures 13 aṅgulas; dividing the total length by the length of the tāla we find that there are only 9 tāla in it; again, the total length of a chatus-tāla image is 48 aṅgulas and its tāla is 8 aṅgulas and therefore there are 6 tālas in this set of proportions. Thus it is found that there is no etymological significance clearly visible in the names given to the various proportions."

- T. A. Gopinatha Rao

"The artist does not choose his own problems: he finds in the canon instruction to make such and such images in such and such [a] fashion - for example, an image of Nataraja with four arms, of Brahma with four heads, of Mahisha-Mardini with ten arms, or Ganesa with an elephant’s head."

- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

"It is in drawing from the life that a canon is likely to be a hindrance to the artist; but it is not the method of Indian art to work from the model. Almost the whole philosophy of Indian art is summed up in the verse of Śukrācārya's Śukranĩtisāra which enjoins meditations upon the imager: "In order that the form of an image may be brought fully and clearly before the mind, the imager should medi[t]ate; and his success will be proportionate to his meditation. No other way—not indeed seeing the object itself—will achieve his purpose." The canon then, is of use as a rule of thumb, relieving him of some part of the technical difficulties, leaving him free to concentrate his thought more singly on the message or burden of his work. It is only in this way that it must have been used in periods of great achievement, or by great artists."

- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Renaissance Italy
Other such systems of 'ideal proportions' in painting and sculpture include Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, based on a record of body proportions made by the architect Vitruvius, in the third book of his series De architectura. Rather than setting a canon of ideal body proportions for others to follow, Vitruvius sought to identify the proportions that exist in reality; da Vinci idealised these proportions in the commentary that accompanies his drawing:

"The length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man; from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man; from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man. The maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man; from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man; the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man; the root of the penis is at half the height of a man; the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man; from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man; from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man; the distances from below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and to one-third of the face."

Canon of Jōchō
Jōchō (定朝; died 1057 CE), also known as Jōchō Busshi, was a Japanese sculptor of the Heian period. He popularised the yosegi technique of sculpting a single figure out of many pieces of wood, and he redefined the canon of body proportions used in Japan to create Buddhist imagery. He based the measurements on a unit equal to the distance between the sculpted figure's chin and hairline. The distance between each knee (in the seated lotus pose) is equal to the distance from the bottoms of the legs to the hair.

Contemporary (head-based) method
Modern figurative artists tend to use a shorthand of more comprehensive canons, based on proportions relative to the human head. In the system recommended by Andrew Loomis, an idealized human body is eight heads tall, the torso being three heads and the legs another four; a more realistically proportioned body, he claims, is closer to seven-and-a-half heads tall, the difference being in the length of the legs. He additionally recommends head-based proportions for children of varying ages, and as means of producing different effects in adult bodies (e.g. a "heroic" body is nine heads tall).