In Search of Beauty: A Human Journey Toward Harmony and the Divine

From the earliest cave paintings to architectural masterpieces, through musical, literary, and mechanical creation, humanity has never stopped striving to create what we commonly call beauty. But what is beauty, if not a form of transcendence, an echo of the divine, an attempt to bring order, emotion, or even eternity into the chaos of the world? Discover why Bianchet has decided to incorporate a timeless design proportion into the geometry of its timepieces in search of Beauty.

The Taj Mahal, admired for its exquisite symmetry and beauty

A Universal and Timeless Quest

This desire for beauty transcends cultures, eras, and mediums. It is as old as humanity itself. Civilizations separated by vast distances and centuries developed artistic expressions built on similar principles: symmetry, harmony, balance, proportion. In Greek temples, Gothic cathedrals, Zen gardens, or Persian miniatures, we find a common aspiration: to reach beyond the ordinary, to grasp something greater than ourselves.

Creating beauty is not a purely decorative or functional act. It is often spiritual—sometimes sacred. It’s about rising above the mundane, reaching for a higher truth, for an ideal that is often ineffable.

The Florence Duomo, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture designed with the Golden Ratio

Beauty as a Language of the Divine

In many traditions, beauty is seen as a reflection of the divine. Plato believed beauty gave us access to absolute truths. For him, contemplating a beautiful object allowed the soul to remember the perfection of the world of ideas. Beauty thus became a bridge between the material world and eternity.

This view has endured through time. In sacred art, beauty is not just meant to decorate but to awaken the soul, to stir wonder, to create an inner silence conducive to contemplation. Beauty becomes a universal language—a tool for inner elevation.

The Nautilus embodies the presence of the Golden Ratio in nature

The Golden Ratio: Geometry of the Sublime

In this quest, humans have searched for tools to understand, reproduce, and perhaps even master beauty. The most famous of these are undoubtedly the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence—mathematical proportion and principles found in nature, in the human body, in seashells, galaxies, and used for centuries by artists, architects, and creators to structure their works.

This divine proportion appears to connect the visible world with a hidden harmony. It offers a key to understanding existence, suggesting that beauty is not only subjective but also built upon deep, universal structures that our eyes and minds instinctively recognize as “right.”

The Geometry of Beauty in Watchmaking Design

From Da Vinci to Modern Design

These mathematical principles have been applied across disciplines to create structures and compositions that feel intuitively harmonious. In art, Leonardo da Vinci is believed to have used the Golden Ratio in the composition of the Vitruvian Man and the proportions of the Mona Lisa. 

In architecture, it governs the façade of the Parthenon in Athens and can be traced throughout the design of Gothic cathedrals. Musicians like Bartók and Debussy wove Fibonacci-based timing and structure into their compositions, creating rhythms that are both natural and subtly complex.

In watchmaking, the Golden Ratio offers a framework for achieving visual equilibrium. At Bianchet, we incorporate this timeless proportion into the very geometry of our timepieces—structuring the movement, case, dial, and even the placement of the tourbillon around this invisible harmony. In other contemporary disciplines such as nature photography, or modern design, the Golden Ratio continues to guide creators in the pursuit of beauty that feels universal, effortless, and elevated.

The Golden Ratio shapes the bridges of Bianchet tourbillon movements

The Search of Beauty: A Living Need for Timelessness

Today, in a hyper-connected, fast-paced, and often disembodied world, the search for beauty remains. It evolves, embraces technology, explores new mediums—but continues to fulfill a fundamental human need: a need for meaning, for order, for emotion, for timelessness.

Whether it’s a work of art, a building, a design object, a mechanical movement, or a simple gesture, beauty touches us because it reminds us of who we are—or perhaps, who we could become.