A London-based dentist believes he has finally cracked the real Da Vinci Code by uncovering a hidden detail that has puzzled experts for over 500 years. For centuries, scholars have studied Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man which depicts his vision of what the perfectly proportioned male body would look like.
The painting shows two superimposed views of a man, each enclosed in a circle and a square respectively. The mysterious treasure of Renaissance art is considered one of the most important anatomical drawings in the world. Its references to art, maths and the human body have remained a mystery to scientists for hundreds and hundreds of years.
But now London-based dentist and trained geneticist Dr Rory Mac Sweeney believes he has uncovered a hidden detail in world famous drawing.
In the discovery, described in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Dr Mac Sweeny explains how he may have figured out why the Italian master placed the male in perfect proportions inside both a square and a circle.
Mac Sweeney’s breakthrough came when he spotted an equilateral triangle “hidden in plain sight” drawn between the figure’s legs, corresponding to Bonwill’s triangle, an anatomical construct connecting the two mandibular condyles and the midpoint of the lower incisors, which governs optimal jaw mechanics.
The triangle used to construct the Vitruvian produces a specific ratio between the size of the other shapes, 1.634. This ratio is incredibly close to the “special blueprint number”, which appears in nature and is said to be used to construct the most-efficient structures, like the human jaw, human skull, or the atomic structure of crystals.
The triangle can be found between the man’s legs in the artwork, and “isn’t just a random shape”, Dr Sweeney, a graduate of the School of Dental Science at Trinity College in Dublin.
He continues: “We’ve all been looking for a complicated answer, but the key was in Leonardo’s own words.
“He was pointing to this triangle all along. What’s truly amazing is that this one drawing encapsulates a universal rule of design.
“It shows that the same ‘blueprint’ nature uses for efficient design is at work in the ideal human body.
“Leonardo knew, or sensed, that our bodies are built with the same mathematical elegance as the universe around us.”
He adds: This shape matches one found in modern anatomy known as “Bonwill’s triangle”, which explains how human jaws work in the most efficient way, he says.
According to the dentist, the discovery is particularly poignant as it details that the Vitruvian Man is mich more than just a historic piece of art.
He considers the artwork a piece of “scientific genius that was centuries ahead of its time”.