However, there is currently no evidence suggesting the Golden Ratio φ determines facial beauty – or any visual beauty for that matter. Researchers have identified some “Platonic” traits of facial beauty, including averageness and symmetry, sexual dimorphism, skin texture, So it’s clear: there is no magic number that universally determines beauty. However, unlike masculinised fashion models from Northwestern Europe, the correlation between their facial ratios and the Golden Ratio of Marquardt’s mask were “statistically significantly invalid”. These winners are seen across many cultures to be very beautiful. One study of the 2001-2015 Miss Universe winners illustrated this strikingly. In fact, evidence suggests that, while facial ratios may correlate with perceived facial beauty, these ratios depend on biological and cultural factors. This is a look, as one study notes, “seen in fashion models”. In fact, it mostly represents the facial features of the small population of masculinised Northwestern European women. Studies show Marquardt’s mask does not represent sub-Saharan Africans or East Asians, nor does it represent South Indians. So it was his research on this select group of people that led to his claims and the mask.īut Marquardt’s claims have since been disproven, and the Golden Ratio test debunked. In order to study “attractive” faces, Marquardt measured the facial proportions of movie actors and models. Plastic surgery is often guided by Golden Ratio measurements, and apps featuring the Golden Ratio test are popular. Marquardt’s claims have been highly influential. Marquardt’s face mask is also called the ‘repose frontal mask’. He also claimed the mask could be used to objectively assess beauty, which led to the Golden Ratio test. Marquardt then created a geometric face mask that represents “ideal” facial proportions for the benefit of cosmetic surgeons and orthodontists – in his words, “as a paradigm of the ideal, final aesthetic result”. For example, he claimed an ideal face would have a mouth φ times wider than the nose. In 2002, Marquardt claimed to have found the Golden Ratio determines beautiful facial proportions. Marquardt’s maskĪmong those promoting the Golden Ratio as a beauty ideal is cosmetic surgeon Stephen R. Today the Golden Ratio is promoted in art, architecture, photography and plastic surgery for its supposed visual beauty. But careful calculations show this claim is false. Voted the most beautiful building in the world in 2017, the Parthenon in Athens is claimed to have φ among its proportions. There is no record of ancient Greeks mentioning the Golden Ratio outside of maths and numerology, and studies show φ is very rarely observed in ancient Greek art and architecture. This led to the popular assertion that ancient Greek art and architecture featured the Golden Ratio and were therefore beautiful.īut as Mario Livio describes in his book The Golden Ratio, this has been dispelled as a myth. In his final book, Der Goldne Schnitt, he claimed all of the most beautiful and fundamental proportions relate to the Golden Ratio, not only in bodies but also in nature, art, music and architecture. Illustration by Leonardo da Vinci The myth of the Golden Ratio in ancient artĪdolph Zeising, in his books published between 18, expanded on this idea. It’s thought The Vitruvian Man was finished aound 1490 AD, some 1,800 years after Plato’s death. Da Vinci expressed this ideal in his famous illustration The Vitruvian Man. It also promoted the Platonic idea that human bodies should ideally satisfy certain divine mathematical proportions. This widely influential work ignited the first bout of popular interest in the Golden Ratio. In 1509, Pacioli published a written trilogy on the Golden Ratio, titled Divina Proportione, with illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci. One promoter of Plato’s ideas was Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli. This greatly influenced Western thinking, including modern science and its presumption of universal laws of nature – such as Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, or Albert Einstein’s equation for special relativity: E = mc 2. After all, no perfect triangles or pentagrams exists in real life.Īccording to Plato, these truths and ideals can only be glimpsed in the physical world via logical reasoning, or by creating symmetry and order, through which they might shine. Influenced by the Pythagoreans and their love of beautiful maths, Greek philosopher Plato (423-347 BC) proposed the physical world is an imperfect projection of a more beautiful and “real” realm of truth and ideals. Shyamal/Wikimedia Plato’s realm of ideals Fibonacci numbers are found in the sunflower (helianthus) whorl.
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