Plate CLXXX from the third volume of Pettigrew’s Design in Nature (1908), illustrating, via classical and modern sculpture, “diagonal screwing movements” that occur during “walking, swimming, and flying”. In numerical order: a life study by Gérome; Venus of Ostia; the Greek boxer Damoxenus by Canova; and Discobolus in bronze.
Featured on PDR in the essay The Spiralist
Why do helical seashells resemble spiralling galaxies and the human heart? Kevin Dann leads us into the gyre of James Bell Pettigrew’s Design in Nature (1908), a provocative and forgotten exploration of the world’s archetypal whorl.
Also appearing in the essay…
Diagonal screwing movements that occur during walking, swimming, and flying.
Artist
Date
1908
From
Design in Nature
