Proportion, proportion consists in the different dimensions of objects compared to each other.

M. de Watelet, [1] on whom we draw for this article, believes that the first ideas of imitations in sculpture and painting were led naturally to making copies equal to the objects imitated; the operation of imitating in this manner is less complicated; consequently, it is easier. It is less complicated in that it is the effect of an immediate relationship; one simply executes what one sees as one sees it. In this alone it is easier. It is more so because with the assistance of the simplest measures one can assure oneself if one has succeeded and can correct if one is wrong.

Measurements are thus the means by which one arrives at learning proportions , and producing correct ideas about them.

We do not have any written details at all about the measures used by the Greeks to regulate proportion ; their didactic works on the arts have not come down to us; but we know their statues. Lucky in the portion fortune has dealt us, we should not complain. Great works are worth more than precepts.

The Germans and the Italians who have worked in this field, such as Albert Durer and Paul Lomazzo, [2] made use of one part of the human body to measure that same body. This measure is a sort of universal measure which has nothing to fear from changes in usage, or variations in nomenclature.

Some measure the figure by means of the length of the face: what is called the face , is the space from and including the chin to the roots of the hair, which is the top of the forehead. Others take as a measure the length of the whole head; that is, a straight line which starts at the top of the head and ends at the tip of the chin.

It is felt that too much importance should not be placed on the choice between these ways of measuring; and that each artist can, as he likes, choose among those that have been devised, or make one up that suits him.

What is certain, is that too much precision in measurement is subject to errors; the most common occasion for these errors arises when one measures the parts that are raised. It is very easy then to attribute to the length of a limb the extent of the contours caused by the accidental swellings of muscles and flesh.

Furthermore, detailed measurements are used very little in painting because they cannot take place when an object is presented foreshortened. Moreover, their cold and slow use scarcely suits an art that needs a lot of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, painters must have a reflexive knowledge of these measurements, and must have studied them when they begin to draw.

The way to render the study of measurement really useful is to base it primarily on osteology.

The bones are the scaffolding of the body; the laws of proportion followed by nature in the dimensions of the body and its members, are contained in the extension which she permits, and are specified in the limited growth which she accords to the solid parts. It is in consequence of this limited and successive growth that nature does not show uniformity in the proportions of the human body. She varies them primarily by the different characters that are proper to the different ages of life.

First variety of the proportions of the body, is not the exact reduction of the subsequent ages . Childhood, with regard to the proportions of the body, is not the exact reduction of subsequent ages. Thus, to represent a child, it is not a matter of reducing the size of a man; because then one would only represent a small man, and not a child.

The head, for example, is in childhood, much bigger, than at other ages, in proportion to the other parts. At three years the length of the head, multiplied by five, forms the full height of a child. At four, five, and six years, the height is from six to six and a half heads; whereas, in maturity, the proportions adopted are eight heads for the total height.

The proportion of seven heads and two parts, that is, seven and a half heads, suits a young man in the flower of his youth, and whose effeminate education has not allowed fatigue and violent exercises to develop their impulses fully; this is how the Vatican’s Antinous and the Petus of La Vigne Ludovisi are found to be proportioned. [3]

The proportion of eight heads for the entire figure is appropriate for representing the stature of a young man in the full flower of his age, and in the exercise of arms; this is what has been observed in the statue of the dying gladiator, which used to be seen in Rome in La Vigne Ludovisi, and which is now seen in the Capitol. [4] This proportion is developed, svelte, light, such as is presented by youth exercised, since the development of the mind operates by the frequent use of its faculties.

The virile age is characterized by a less elongated dimension. The statue of Hercules, called the Farnese Hercules , is seven heads, three parts, seven modules. [5] It would seem that the artist would have wished by this reduction to make felt the consistency, and so to speak, the support that their more reflective and less impetuous movements allow men of this age.

The approach of old age must again produce a squarer character, which denotes how the solid parts become heavier. The Laocoön is only seven heads, two parts, three modules. [6]

Finally, in extreme old age the actual wasting away gives rise to different changes in the proportions which should need to be further evaluated.

The artist who must neglect nothing which can characterize his figures, avoids limiting himself to a single proportion in all his figures; and following the example given by Raphael above all, he assigns to each age the proportions and the character appropriate to them.

Difference of proportions occasioned by sexual difference . Variations in proportions are also occasioned by sexual difference.

Independent of the total height, which is less in women, they have a longer neck, shorter thighs, more compact shoulders and chest, wider hips, fatter arms, stronger legs, narrower feet; their visible muscles render their curves more equal, more flowing, and their movements gentler.

Young women have a small head, a long neck, lowered shoulders, a slim body, hips a bit wide, and small feet.

The ancients give Venus a height of seven heads and three parts: such is the statue of the Venus de’ Medici, and the proportions of the goddess of Beauty. [7]

The statue we know as the Greek Shepherdess, which is perhaps Diana, or one of her nymphs leaving the bath, has the proportion of seven heads, three parts, and six modules, a character which she no doubt owes to the exercise of the hunt and to the dances which should render the size of nymphs svelte and agile. [8]

Perhaps we could also find in the proportions of Minervas, Junos, and Cybeles, those small differences that, when the arts have arrived at their perfection, establish nuances less visible to the calculating eye than to the feeling which grasps and the taste which discerns.

Age and sex do not have the exclusive right to characterize the proportions of the human body. Rank, condition, fortune, climate, and temperament contribute to causing, in the development of proportions , visible differences.

It is not necessary for artists to dwell on the effects of these different causes, but it could only be pleasant for them and advantageous for their art, to reflect and observe, the occasions for which constantly present themselves in civic life.

They would note, for example, that it is men whose constitution and temperament occasion a heavy proportion . Their muscles do not appear very distinct from one another: they have a big head, a short neck, high shoulders, a small stomach, big thighs and knees, wide feet. And this is how the Greek artist, by only making all these particularities flourish, characterized the young faun. They see that there are others, according to which, undoubtedly the ancients characterized their heroes and their demigods, who, in a very different conformation, had the articulation of their members quite knotty, closed, with very little flesh, a small head, a nervous neck, large and high shoulders, a raised chest, small hips and belly, muscled thighs, principal muscles raised and detached, legs well-defined along the bottom, soles of the feet curved down.

It is only too likely that morals insensibly give rise to the physical varieties of the constitution and development of the form of the body. The gentleness which presides over a distinguished or opulent childhood, the aversion to physical exercise, which determines sensual youth to share the delights and nonchalance of women, the premature fattening that, in the virile age, follows the excessive abuse of pleasure; finally, that precocious obsolescence which is felt through a quicker and weightier influence in the capital cities of flourishing nations than anywhere else, must, from generation to generation, debase the races and perhaps change the proportions of bodies.

I do not speak of the extravagance of fashions, because they have no real empire at all over the dimensions that nature has fixed: however, too often they impose themselves on artists weak enough to lend themselves to them, and render the ideas of proportion more vague than one would wish, for the progress of the arts, to have incessantly present in their greatest exactitude.

Up to this point we have considered, in speaking of proportions , the body in repose; let us add that movement causes very distinct and very apparent changes in them.

A limb extended to give or receive, for example, experiences a lengthening; and one observes an infinite number of these anomalies or irregularities in the actions of compression, relaxation, extension, flexing, contraction, and shortening.

A man seated on the ground, who presses down and makes an effort to fit a narrow shoe onto his foot, experiences a shortening of a sixth in the front of his body; whereas by a contrary effect, his arm in curving, is lengthened by an eighth, because the head of the elbow bone develops, and appears, so to speak, beyond its articulation. The same extension can be observed in the calcaneum or heel bone, when the instep is bent.

It is evident, by these examples, that the passions whose movements are violent must give rise to visible differences in the proportions ; while it is possible to perceive them, it is very difficult to reduce them to calculations.

All these variations in proportion are primarily the work of nature; but the art which emulates it, could it not also claim the right to act upon them, when it believes them to be favorable to its illusions? Could one not establish a theory of relationships that would apply to the diversity of position, and the sites where works of art are placed? The wind, placements opposite workshops or trees, vast or enclosed spaces, rocks, or isolation on a plain; these would be the points of difference to establish and perhaps of changes to be allowed in some of the received dimensions. But if art should be flattered to be able, as it were, sometimes to add to nature, it must be intimidated by the risks that it runs when it dares to regard such freedoms as particular sources of beauty.

After all, one must never forget that the justness of proportions , beyond the correction of drawing, is for the parts of a single figure, that which is prescribed for figures taken in their totality. Parrhasius was the first to ordain the rules and method for painting, and Euphranor the first to apply them to encaustic painting. Pliny notes however that the same Parrhasius gave too much extension, compared to the rest, to the middle parts of figures, and which comes to the same thing, that Euphranor gave too much extension to his heads and to the attachment of limbs to the body. Asclepiodorus deserved neither of these reproaches, since Apelles himself agreed about the superiority of this artist to all the others for the justness of his proportions .

1. Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786), was a wealthy amateur who moved in the same circles as the philosophes – most notably the Monday and Wednesday salons of Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin. He contributed many articles on the fine arts to the Encyclopédie . A portrait by Greuze shows him with a small reproduction of the Venus de’ Medici, thought at the time to represent perfect female proportions. (See below and Drawing plate XXXVIII.) The pair of calipers in his right hand suggests that he is thinking about proportion as he gazes at her.

2. The German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and the Italian painter Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1538-1592), both of whom wrote works of art theory.

3. The youth Antinous (c. 111 – c. 130) was a favorite of the Emperor Hadrian. There are many statues of him. Jaucourt is referring to the statue now known as the Belvedere Hermes acquired by the Vatican in 1543 (MV 90 0 0). See Drawing plate XXXIV. The second reference is to a sculpture then in the Villa Ludovisi in Rome, known in French as the Palais de la Vigne de Ludovise. Now in the Museo nazionale di Roma, Palazzo Altemps, it was known in the eighteenth century as Paettus and Arria, and now sometimes as the Galatian suicide or the Ludovisi Gaul Killing Himself and his Wife.

4. Now known as the Dying Gaul, it is still in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

5. The Farnese Hercules was in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome through most of the eighteenth century. In 1787, the Farnese collection was moved to Naples, where this statue can be seen today in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. In the Encyclopédie , it is illustrated in Drawing Plate XXXIII.

6. The statue of Laocoön and His Sons is in the Vatican, where it has been displayed since its discovery in the sixteenth century. In the Encyclopédie , it is illustrated in Drawing Plate XXXVI.

7. The Venus de’ Medici is still in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where it was a must-see on the eighteenth-century Grand Tour. In the Encyclopédie , it is illustrated in Drawing Plate XXXVIII.

8. He is probably referring to a statue known today at Venus Callipye. Along with the Farnese Hercules, it was part of the Farnese collection, which was moved from Rome to Naples in the late eighteenth century. Today it too is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale there.