Da Vinci's Ghost (38 page)

Plate 2.
A twelfth-century diagram of the macrocosm-microcosm analogy. The four elements are linked to the four seasons, the four humors, the four cardinal directions, the four ages of man, the twelve winds, the twelve months, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. At the corners of the central diamond are the four cardinal winds, named in Latin and Greek. The initial letters of the Greek names spell out the name of Adam, who, in tiny script inside the red circle at the center, is identified with Christ, abbreviated as χρς.

Plate 3.
The microcosm and macrocosm, from a twelfth-century German manuscript. The illustration gives human form to the sort of geometrical scheme laid out in Plate 2, and its layout underlies the microcosmic vision of Hildegard shown in Plate 5.

Plate 4.
A geographical anatomy of the microcosm: the Ebstorf mappamundi, from the early thirteenth century. East is at the top, and the earth consists of three parts: Asia (
top
), Europe (
bottom left
), and Africa (
bottom right
). The entire image is also an embodiment of Christ, whose head appears at the top, whose feet appear at the bottom, and whose hands appear at the sides.

Plate 5.
The microcosm as envisioned by Hildegard of Bingen. At the center, superimposed on the earth, is a human fi gure who at once represents Adam, Christ, and all of humanity. At the circumference, embodying the whole of the cosmic order, is the Holy Ghost, above which, beyond time and space, presides the Godhead.

Plate 6.
God as architect of the world, from an illustrated early-thirteenth-century Bible.

Plate 7.
The architect as God, and man as microcosm, by Taccola (c. 1430). “I have all measures in me,” the caption reads, “both of what is heavenly above and of what is earthly and infernal.”

Plate 8.
Two of Leonardo’s proportional skull studies (1489). “Where the line
am
intersects the line
cb,
” a note at the left reads, “will be the confl uence of all the senses”—the seat of the human soul.

Plate 9.
Vitruvian Man. Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1490).