Fig. 1. "Elevated hexahedron" from the manuscript version of De divina proportione. The term "hexahedron" means "six-sided polyhedron", i.e., the cube, and "elevated" refers to the result of erecting a pyramid on the outside of each face. Thus, the result has twenty-four triangular faces in a nonconvex arrangement. There are notes in the printed version of the book specifying that Pacioli invented this form as well as the "elevated tetrahedron". | top of page | return to text |