Vitruvian Man. Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing with accompanying notes created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487 as recorded in one of his journals. It is a vintage Renaissance fine art portrait sketch featuring a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square.

Sketch from one of Leonardo da Vinci's many journals. Leonardo kept a series of journals in which he wrote almost daily, as well as separate notes and sheets of observations, comments and plans which were left to various pupils and were later bound. Many of the journals have survived to illustrate Leonardo's studies, discoveries and inventions. Most of the journals were written backwards in mirror script. His journals were later published, 165 years after his death.