DA VINCI'S UMBILICUS

DAVINCI BELIEVED IN THE IMPORTANCE OF THE UMBILICUS

The umbilicus is also used to visually separate the abdomen into quadrants. The navel comes in the center of the circle enclosing the spread-eagle figure in Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, his famous drawing on human proportions. This illustrates the principle that in the shift between the spread-eagle pose and the straight pose, the apparent center of the figure seems to move, but in reality, the navel of the figure, which is the true center of gravity, remains motionless.

The height at which navels are located on the abdomen is variable. An ideal proportion of navel height versus body height is said to be based on the Golden Section, also known as the "Divine Proportion" by philosophers and artists. This is a geometric proportion in which a line is divided so that the ratio of the length of the longer line segment to the length of the entire line is equal to the ratio of the length of the shorter line segment to the length of the longer line segment. This Golden Section ratio has a numerical value of approximately 1.618. In other words, an ideal navel height is about 62% of the body height and is said to exhibit special beauty as the legs and torso appear in sound proportion.