Inspired by the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, the drawing depicts a nude man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in both a circle and square.

[1] Although not the only known drawing of a man inspired by the writings of Vitruvius, the work is a unique synthesis of artistic and scientific ideals and often considered an archetypal representation of the High Renaissance.

It later came into the possession of Venanzio de Pagave, who convinced the engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to include it in a book of Leonardo's drawings, which widely disseminated the previously little-known image.

Due to its sensitivity to light, the drawing rarely goes on public display, but it was borrowed by the Louvre in 2019 for their exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death.

[2] The man is portrayed in different stances simultaneously: His arms are stretched above his shoulders and then perpendicular to them, while his legs are together and also spread out along the circle's base.

[11][12] According to the biographer Walter Isaacson, the use of delicate lines, an intimate stare, and intricate hair curls, "weaves together the human and the divine".

The distances from the chin to the nose and the hairline and the eyebrows are equal to the ears and one-third of the face[14] The moderately successful architect and engineer Vitruvius lived from c. 80 – c. 20 BCE, primarily in the Roman Republic.

If a man is placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a compass centered at his navel, his fingers and toes will touch the circumference of a circle thereby described.

[18] This has been heavily disproven by many documented accounts from Leonardo's colleagues or records of him either owning, reading, and being influenced by writings from antiquity.

[16] Many artists attempted to design figures which would satisfy Vitruvius' claims, with the earliest being three such images by Francesco di Giorgio Martini around the 1470s.

[20] Leonardo's version of the Vitruvian Man corrected inaccuracies in Vitruvius's account, particularly related to the head, due to use of book two of the De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti.

[9] It is likely that Leonardo's drawings dated to 1487–1490, and entitled The proportions of the arm, were related to the Vitruvian Man, possibly serving as preparatory sketches.

[1] Two leading art historians differ in this respect; Martin Kemp gives c. 1487,[4][n 4] while Carmen C. Bambach contends that the earliest possible date—which "one may not entirely discount"—is 1488.

[1] Bambach, in addition to Pedretti, Giovanna Nepi Scirè and Annalisa Perissa Torrini give a slightly broader range of c. 1490–1491.

[7] Bambach explains that this range fits "best with the manner of exact, engraving-like parallel hatching contained within robust pen-and-ink outlines, over traces of lead paint, stylus-ruling, and compass composition".

[30] After Bossi's death in 1815, the drawing was sold to the abbot Luigi Celotti in 1818, and entered into the Venetian Gallerie dell'Accademia's collection in 1822, where it has since remained.

[1] The Vitruvian Man is rarely displayed as extended exposure to light would cause fading; it is kept on the fourth floor of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in a locked room.

[31] In 2019, the Louvre requested to borrow the drawing for their monumental Léonard de Vinci exhibition, which celebrated the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death.

[32] They faced substantial resistance from the heritage group Italia Nostra, who contended that the drawing was too fragile to be transported, and filed a lawsuit.

[42] The art historian Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, writing for Encyclopædia Britannica, states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo ('cosmography of the microcosm').

[1] Reflecting on its fame, Bambach further stated in 2019 that "the endless recent fetishizing of the image by modern commerce through ubiquitous reproductions (in popular books, advertising, and the Euro coin) has kidnapped it from the realm of Renaissance drawing, making it difficult for the viewer to appreciate it as a work of nuanced, creative expression.