This is not by Leonardo or VITRUVIAN MAN AND THE FEATHERLESS BIPED

I suspect that the Saint Anthony tapestry was mostly designed by the Pieter Coecke van Aelst workshop and not the Raphael workshop since the Roman ruin in the background is a terribly callous way to allude to the 1527 Sack of Rome which must have caused untold destruction among Raphael’s circle. But it seems likely they helped out with the man in a shell near the lower left corner.

The best explanation for an illustration in the tapestry of Leonardo da Vinci’s caption on the famous Vitruvian Man drawing seems to be Vasari’s claim that there were 50 people milling around the Stanza della Segnatura while Raphael and assistants worked on the famous fresco of the School of Athens. Leonardo’s caption was 1) on an unpublished drawing, 2) in Italian, and 3) backwards in “mirror writing,” and 4) it suggested a hilarious way to misread Vitruvius. The 50 (all or mostly) Italian persons could have included serious scholars, child apprentices, and persons preoccupied with rivaling Leonardo and Michelangelo.

A translation of the second paragraph of the caption on Leonardo’s famous drawing, just above the man’s head, reads

 “if you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands enough that your extended fingers touch the line of the top of your head, know that the centre of the extended limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle”

and fits the person in a shell in the tapestry as well as it does the famous Vitruvian Man in the drawing. It is similar to innumerable sight gags mocking Leonardo in The Garden of Delights/El Jardín de las Delicias, for instance the suggestion that horses are interesting to paint if they are red, white, and blue. The political point was that François I, king of France, was proud of his Leonardo paintings.

The point of the imitation Vitruvian man might be that it is not at all easy to reconstruct Roman architecture based on the Ten Books of Architecture/De Architectura even with the wonderful new editions with woodcut illustrations. The Raphael workshop had faced a similar problem working on the School of Athens, an enormous group portrait, with only some books and old portraits for guidance, and 50 people in the room.

Next to the Vitruvian man in the tapestry and much less obscure is an illustration of another ancient oversimplified definition of a man, the famous “featherless biped” of Plato that Diogenes proposed could just as well be a plucked chicken. The story came from Diogenes Laertius:

“Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, ‘Here is Plato’s man.’ In consequence of which there was added to the definition, ‘having broad nails.’” (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in Ten Books, Book VI, 40, page 43 of the Loeb Classics edition, vol. II)

It might be that in the School of Athens, Raphael meant to represent the incident by showing Diogenes sprawled on the floor with bare feet, as though his toenails had caught Plato’s eye.

The tapestries were more or less Bosch imitations albeit with mostly new material, and there are innumerable featherless bipeds in Hieronymus Bosch-style paintings. One in the Lisbon Saint Anthony tryptich (likely actually by Bosch since there are so many copies) illustrated the “broad nails” with hooves on what is more or less a dog with two horse’s legs and wings big ears. (I have no explanation for the wings big ears etc.)

The featherless biped in a Prado Saint Anthony (Las tentaciones de San Antonio Abad, Num. de catálogo P02049) is vastly more attractive and is a little like the one in the tapestry but with human feet. Looking closely at this painting with the help of the museum’s Galería Online, I am starting to think it could really be the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He was said to have studied with Pieter Coecke van Aelst and the tapestries are filled with odds and ends that are almost like Bruegel but seldom as good as Bruegel (maybe with the exception of the featherless biped shown here), and he would have been a small child when they were made. The most extraordinary improvement on a theme from the tapestries is the newly restored El vino de la fiesta de San Martín. The small painting of Saint Anthony is vastly harder to recognize as a Bruegel but that may be what it is. I think it is my favorite picture.