Divina Proportione

Luca Pacioli's Divina Proportione has been translated into Dutch for the first time since its appearance five hundred years ago. It should come as no surprise that a translation has not been published before: the work was internationally known and is richly illustrated with drawings attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, the only one ever to be officially published in a book.

The impetus for the translation was the discovery of inaccuracies in Leonardo's contributions. The fact that its disclosure caused a storm of criticism among Leonardo enthusiasts pointed to the need for an illustrated and commented translation that makes the original text insightful.

The Divine Ratio furthered the renaissance of interest in polyhedra, eventually rediscovering the so-called Archimedean bodies, one thousand five hundred years after their description by the Greeks. This in turn led to the discovery of new regular polyhedra, until today. Unwittingly, however, the work also reinforced the myth that something is only beautiful because of the presence of that 'divine ratio' or 'golden ratio' or 'f = 1.618…'. To dispel this myth, Pacioli's treatise On Architecture is included here, which appeared together with the Divina Proportione .

With this translation of the fifteenth-century Italian text, every science enthusiast, teacher, mathematician and chemist, architect and artist can be well-founded by what Pacioli and Leonardo have respectively claimed and drawn.

Mathematician Dr. Dirk Huylebrouck (KU Leuven) is interested in mathematics , as can be seen from his four previous books, and that is how he came into contact with artist Rinus Roelofs (Hengelo), who made the illustrations for this book. For the translation he called upon literary scholar Dr. Emma Grootveld (Leiden University), and together they provided the text with extensive commentary.