ABSTRACT
Clearly standing in the tradition of the doctrine derived from Zeuxis’ composite portrait of Helen, in his treatise Les Proportions du Corps Humain Mesurées sur les plus belles Figures de l'Antiquité (The proportions of the human body measured on the most beautiful figures of antiquity, 1683), Gérard Audran assumes that very few, if any, human bodies were well-proportioned in all their parts. Therefore, he advises his readers to study ancient sculptures instead of real bodies when searching for ideal proportions. This chapter demonstrates that Audran was not the first to make this claim, but he continued an argument already adopted by Abraham Bosse and Henri Testelin, who were both members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture . Through the integration of a broader range of antique models within a systematic theoretical framework, Audran transformed the measurement of ancient bodies into a scientific method for defining ideal beauty.
