INTRODUCTORY. LXVII 



world ; and, although he cannot jjroperly be said to have established a system, it is 

 possible to construct one on the proportions he lays down/ 



Sir Joshua Reynolds's writings are full of admirable criticisms on proportion, but 

 he furnishes no tables of dimensions from actual measurement." Flaxman's measures, 

 published in the early part of this century,^ are only modifications of the canon of 

 Vitruvius. 



But it is in this century, and more especially in the present generation, that authors 

 have arisen who have approached the subject of proportion of the human figure in a 

 philosophical manner. Of these, the earliest, and one of the most distinguished, was 

 Godefroy Schadow, the accomplished sculptor and director of the Royal Academy of 

 Berlin. One only of his works needs to be noticed here, viz, his Polyclet} The great 

 merit of this work is its freedom from theoretical speculation ; Schadow's measure- 

 ments being taken from living models, although the number of his observations was 

 in some instances too limited to be considered as furnishing a satisfactory mean. He 

 was the first to lay down the different dimensions observable in the head and face of 

 the two sexes ; the dimensions of the profile at maturity and in old age ; of the new-born 

 child; the rate of expansion of the cranium with growth, and its relation to the 

 increase in size of the features. The Fob/clet consists of a quarto volume of text, in par- 

 allel pages of French and German, and a folio volume of illustrations. Schadow's 

 drawings, like those of Albert Durer, represent profile, face, and back. 



In 1854, Carus, the distinguished German physiologist, published a work on human 

 proportion, in which he assumed the hand's length for his unit, dividing it into twenty- 

 four parts.^ He believed the vertebral column, consisting of twenty-four free vertebrae, 

 to be the key of human proportion, or, as he termed it, "the true organic ell divided 

 into 24 inches." In confirmation of this view, he observes that in the egg of the mam- 

 mals the first indication of the form' of the futui-e being is the rayed line which after- 

 ward becomes the spinal column. He observes, too, that at birth, in a normal infant, 

 the length of the column of twenty-four free vertebrae is exactly one-third the length 

 of a line drawn perpendicularly from the spinous process of the atlas to the spinous 

 process of the last lumbar vertebra in the full-grown individual. His unit, divided by 

 this authoritative measure of twenty-four, furnishes in its terms all the dimensions 

 required to educe the complete form. Carus devised a figui-e from his scale, which was 

 neither man nor woman, but capable by the application of certain rules of being mod- 

 ified to represent either. "These rules, he stated, could assume the precision of an alge- 

 braic formula, and by its aid it would be easy to convert the figure to that of a dwarf 

 or giant ; or to change the head to that of a poet, a philosopher, or an athlete. 



While the Dresden professor w^as elaborating a theory in which proportions were 

 to be determined by their supposed numerical relations to an arbitrary unit, two 

 English artists produced works containing theories based upon similar principles, and 

 characterized by much ingenuity. Mr. D. R. Hay establishes a central vertical line, 



1 Polyclet, 11. 11. 



-Discourses on painting, 4to, London, 1842. 



^Lectures on sculpture, 8vo, Loudon, 1829. 



* Polyclet Oder von den maassen des mcnsclien, nach dem geachhohte und alter, &c., 4to ; plates, folio, Berlin, 1835. 



^Die proportions-lehre dor menschlichen gestalt, folio, Leipzig, 1854. 



