The magic art of the golden ratio
"Things that are endowed with correct proportions delight the senses," St. Thomas Aquinas.
The golden ratio, in the proportions of a spiral or a rectangle, is ratio the most pleasant to look at for the human eye. It is very present in art and is loved since antiquity. It was identified on the facade of the Parthenon by the Greek Phidias, which dates from the fifth century BC and in the dimensions of the pyramid of Cheops (XX century before J-C).
It is called "divine proportion" because the builders of cathedrals, especially gothic ones, used it for the construction. Its value is 1.618 and is obtained by dividing two measures.
Did you know that the golden ratio has been found in The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci?
Leonardo da Vinci often explained that by using the proportions of the golden ratio to create an object, people found it more attractive. So he created the Mona Lisa using the golden rectangle at the face of the model. In addition, the frame used has a coefficient of 1/φ (golden ratio) .
Also present in The Vitruvian Man, it is part of the pentagram, a five-pointed star in a circle.
Thus, the aesthetics of his work is closely related to the golden ratio.
This proportion is also represented in other Renaissance paintings, such as that of The Birth of Venus by Botticelli.
More recently, in 1955, Dalí painted The Sacrament of the Last Supper, a work whose proportions correspond to the golden ratio. We notice that the scene is integrated in a dodecahedron.
It is also present in music, in the instruments as well as in the harmony, the golden section determines the highlight of a piece. Béla Bartók, Hungarian pianist and composer, used the golden section in his "Music for strings, percussion and celesta". The division of each movement, the changes in intensity and the tempos meet the requirements of the golden section.
The proportions of the violins correspond very exactly to the famous golden ratio because its sides respect golden sections: 34/21=1.618; 55/34=1.618 and 89/55=1.618.
To discover the presence of the golden ratio in nature, click here.
