Doryphoros

Polykleitos (Greek), Doryphoros (Spear Bearer), ca. 450-440 BCE. Marble, height: 2.12 m. Naples National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy. 

The great sculptor Polykleitos fashioned his exquisite marble statue based on what the ancient Greeks considered ideal human proportions. Doryphoros comes more than 400 years before the Roman architect Vitruvius described human proportions in De Architectura (ca. 15 BCE), and almost a millenia before Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of The Vitruvian Man (1490). 

The Golden Ratio is definitely at play in the form of this athletic man; for example, navel to feet:: head to navel:: head to navel: head to feet -- but the nature of its role in Polykleitos's design is uncertain. Did the Greek sculptor consciously employ the ratio when designing his work? Or is there something to the claim that the Golden Ratio is innately beautiful, so that an artist seeking to create an ideal human body would base it on Phi without even being aware of it?