A slate with Euclid's name.
The bottom left of Pacioli's painting, shows a slate with Euclids's name. Pacioli seems to be relating the text he is reading to the Slate with Euclid's name on it. The slate probably refers to Euclid's treatise of thirteen books on Geometry which he called "The Elements". Completed in Alexandria in 300 BCE, it is still considered to be the best book ever written on elementary mathematics or ever likely to be written (Coxeter 1980) .
The Parthenon. The facade is a Golden Rectangle.
His treatise "the Elements" laid the foundation for the PLATONIC SOLIDS, which
represent the culmination of the discoveries that marked the epic age of Greek Mathematics. Euclid in 300BCE, put
the finishing touches to the theory of the Golden Proportion and showed how to construct the Golden Proportion
with compass and ruler only.
There seems to be no doubt that Greek architects and sculptors incorporated this ratio in their artifacts. The
proportions of the Parthenon shows the way the Greeks deliberately used the Golden Proportion (Huntley, 1970).
In the early days of the present century, it was suggested that the Greek letter 'phi',
, the initial letter of Phidias' name, who was one of the ancient
Greek famous Sculptors, would be adopted to designate the Golden Proportion.
