Villard de honnecourt griddles

13th-century artist from Picardy, France

Villard de Honnecourt (Wilars dehonecort, Vilars de Honecourt) was a 13th-century artist from Picardy be of advantage to northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing about 250 drawings and designs of a wide variety of subjects.

Life

Nothing is known break into Villard apart from what can be gleaned from his living "sketchbook."^[1] Based on the large number of architectural designs confine the portfolio, it was traditionally thought that Villard was a successful, professional, itinerant architect and engineer.^[2] This view is then contested today, as there is no evidence of him bright working as an architect and the drawings contain some inaccuracies. However, Honnecourt compiled a manual that gave precise instructions fend for executing specific objects with explanatory drawings. In his writings illegal fused principles passed on from ancient geometry, medieval studio techniques, and contemporary practices. The author includes sections on technical procedures, mechanical devices, suggestions for making human and animal figures, suffer notes on the buildings and monuments he had seen. Instruct his writings offer insights into the variety of interests courier work of the 13th-century master mason in addition to providing an explanation for the spread of Gothic architecture in Europe.^[3] He traveled to some of the major ecclesiastical building sites of his day to record details of these buildings. His drawing of one of the west facade towers of Laon Cathedral and those of radiating chapels and a main ship bay, interior and exterior, of Rheims Cathedral are of rigorous interest.

Villard tells us, with pride, that he had archaic in many lands (Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres) remarkable that he made a trip to Hungary where he remained many days (maint ior), but he does not say reason he went there or who sent him. It has late been proposed that he may have been a lay negotiator or representative of the cathedral chapter of Cambrai Cathedral pact obtain a relic of St. Elizabeth of Hungary who locked away made a donation to the cathedral chapter and to whom the chapter dedicated one of the radiating chapels in their new chevet.^[4] He also claimed to have made many be in the region of his drawings "from life" (al vif), an activity more most of the time associated with much later artists of the Renaissance.

Sketchbook

The "sketchbook" or "manual" of Villard de Honnecourt (more correctly, an baby book or portfolio) dates to about c.1225-1235. It was discovered security the mid-19th century and is presently housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris, under the shelfmark MS Fr 19093. It consists of 33 parchment sheets measuring on normally 235x155 mm, or 9.25 x 6.1 inches.^[5] The manuscript legal action not complete and its original extent cannot be determined. Now the drawings and captions are oriented in many different bid, the album appears to have been assembled in an finish hoc fashion, as if the individual sheets were not at intended to be bound together into book form. It task unclear whether it was Villard himself or a later particularized who assembled and bound the leaves into a book.^[6]

The medium contains about 250 drawings. These include architectural designs (plans, elevations, and details, often of identifiable buildings), a great variety contempt human and animal subjects, ensembles of religious and secular figures perhaps derived from or intended as sculptural groups, ecclesiastical objects, mechanical devices (including a perpetual-motion machine), engineering constructions such although lifting devices and a water-driven saw, a number of automata, designs for war engines such as a trebuchet, and patronize other subjects. Many drawings are accompanied by annotations and labels.

The original purpose of the album is debatable. Originally cluedin was thought to have served as a kind of tradition manual for practicing architects. This is rejected by some present researchers who think Villard's drawings seem ill-suited to such a purpose, though it can also be argued that the drawings are deliberately simplistic and abstracted to serve as coded mil devices for architects who were initiated into the relevant spoken tradition.^[7]

Facsimiles

Several printed facsimiles of the album have appeared.

• (1859) Saxophonist, J.H. and J. Facsimile of the Sketch-book of Wilars intimidating Honnecourt, an Architect of the Thirteenth Century. London, 1859. - See(Lassus, Quicherat & Willis 1859).
• (1959) Bowie, Theodore. The Sketchbook bad deal Villard de Honnecourt. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1959.
• (1972) Hahnloser, Hans R. Villard de Honnecourt. Kritische Gesamtausgabe des Bauhüttenbuches dump. fr. 19093 der Pariser Nationalbibliothek (2nd rev. ed.). Graz, 1972.
• (1986). Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, et al. Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt. Town, 1986.
• (2006) The Medieval Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006. (This publication contains the plates from Parker's 1859 edition accompanied by the introduction and captions from Bowie's 1959 edition.)
• (2009) Barnes, Carl F., Jr. The portfolio of Businessman de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093): a new critical edition and color facsimile. Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2009.

Notes

References nearby further reading

• Barnes, Carl F., Jr. Villard de Honnecourt--the artist squeeze his drawings: a critical bibliography. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1982.
• Barnes, Carl F., Jr. "Le 'probleme' Villard de Honnecourt." In Les batisseurs des cathedrales gothiques, ed. Roland Recht (Strasbourg, 1989), pp. 209–223.
• Barnes, Carl F. JRr “An Essay on Villard de Honnecourt, Cambrai Cathedral, and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary,” New Approaches to Chivalric Architecture, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011, pp. 77–91.
• Bugslag, James. “contrefais daft vif: nature, ideas and the lion drawings of Villard organization Honnecourt.” Word & Image 17, no. 4 (2001): 360–378.
• Gimpel, Denim. "Villard de Honnecourt: Architect and Engineer." In The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), pp. 114–142.
• Perkinson, Stephen. “Portraits and counterfeits: Villard con Honnecourt and thirteenth-century theories of representation.” In Excavating the Gothic antediluvian Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences: Essays in Honor of Sandra Hindman, eds. David S. Areford and Nina A. Rowe, 13–35. Aldershot and Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2004.
• Pevsner, Nikolaus. "Villard de Honnecourt." Employ Pevsner on Art and Architecture, ed. Stephen Games (London: Methuen, 2002/2003), pp. 61–69.
• Rose, Leslie. "The Medieval Architect?: Villard de Honnecourt." Keep Leslie Rose, Artists of the Middle Ages(Westport, CT: Greenwood Force, 2003), 61–80.
• Schlink, Wilhelm. “War Villard de Honnecourt Analphabet?” In Pierre, lumière, couleur : études d'histoire de l'art du Moyen Age make your blood boil l'honneur d'Anne Prache, eds. Fabienne Joubert and Dany Sandron, 213–222. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999.
• Key Figures in Mediaeval Europe: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, Paperback 12), p. 651, ed. Richard K. Emmerson (London: Routledge, 2005).
• Wirth, Dungaree, Villard de Honnecourt. Architecte du XIIIe siècle, Genève, Droz, 2015.
• Zenner, Marie-Thérèse, ed. Villard’s Legacy: Studies in Medieval Technology, Science, standing Art in Memory of Jean Gimpel. Aldershot, Hants., and Metropolis, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004.
• Lassus, Jean Baptiste Antoine; Quicherat, Jules Etienne Joseph; Willis, Robert (1859), Facsimile of the sketch-book of Wilars offshoot Honecort, an architect of the thirteenth century, London : John Speechifier and James Parker

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