Guided Pathway
Panel B
Various levels of transferring the cosmic system to humanity. Harmonic correspondence. Later reduction of the harmony to abstract geometry instead of to cosmically conditional [geometry] (Leonardo).
Astrological and geometrical images represent the different – now harmonious, now conflicting – ways the cosmos and the human body corresponded in the late middle ages and high Renaissance. Together with panels A and C, panel B provides an introductory ‘grammar’ or ‘syntax’ with which to read the subsequent 60 panels. Though a chronological progression may be discerned here, an unambiguous march towards classical or Enlightenment ideals is carefully avoided. Instead, Cornelius Agrippa’s hermeticism, which echoes the zodiacal wisdom at the top of the panel, subverts the centrality of Leonardo’s Vitruvian man.