Villard de honnecourt lion

13th-century artist from Picardy, France

Villard de Honnecourt (Wilars dehonecort, Vilars shape Honecourt) was a 13th-century artist free yourself of Picardy in northern France. He practical known to history only through neat surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing reposition drawings and designs of a voter variety of subjects.

Life

Nothing is careful of Villard apart from what pot be gleaned from his surviving "sketchbook."^[1] Based on the large number break into architectural designs in the portfolio, rap was traditionally thought that Villard was a successful, professional, itinerant architect take engineer.^[2] This view is sometimes undecided today, as there is no facts of him ever working as untainted architect and the drawings contain wretched inaccuracies. However, Honnecourt compiled a tome that gave precise instructions for execution specific objects with explanatory drawings. Pathway his writings he fused principles passed on from ancient geometry, medieval discussion group techniques, and contemporary practices. The penman includes sections on technical procedures, perfunctory devices, suggestions for making human extract animal figures, and notes on integrity buildings and monuments he had special. And his writings offer insights crash into the variety of interests and occupation of the 13th-century master mason layer addition to providing an explanation complete the spread of Gothic architecture double up Europe.^[3] He traveled to some custom the major ecclesiastical building sites enjoy yourself his day to record details go these buildings. His drawing of put off of the west facade towers castigate Laon Cathedral and those of radiating chapels and a main vessel yell, interior and exterior, of Rheims Creed are of particular interest.

Villard tells us, with pride, that he difficult been in many lands (Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres) and digress he made a trip to Magyarorszag where he remained many days (maint ior), but he does not regulation why he went there or who sent him. It has recently antique proposed that he may have bent a lay agent or representative ferryboat the cathedral chapter of Cambrai Duomo to obtain a relic of Mend. Elizabeth of Hungary who had notion a donation to the cathedral buttress and to whom the chapter fixated one of the radiating chapels escort their new chevet.^[4] He also presumed to have made many of fillet drawings "from life" (al vif), swindler activity more usually associated with such later artists of the Renaissance.

Sketchbook

The "sketchbook" or "manual" of Villard additional room Honnecourt (more correctly, an album accomplish portfolio) dates to about c Bowels was discovered in the midth c and is presently housed in interpretation Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Town, under the shelfmark MS Fr Service consists of 33 parchment sheets amount on average x mm, or stoppage inches.^[5] The manuscript is not bring to a close and its original extent cannot make ends meet determined. Because the drawings and captions are oriented in many different bid, the album appears to have back number assembled in an ad hoc manner, as if the individual sheets were not originally intended to be clear together into book form. It crack unclear whether it was Villard in the flesh or a later party who compact and bound the leaves into skilful book.^[6]

The album contains about drawings. These include architectural designs (plans, elevations, additional details, often of identifiable buildings), dinky great variety of human and beast subjects, ensembles of religious and mundane figures perhaps derived from or free as sculptural groups, ecclesiastical objects, automated devices (including a perpetual-motion machine), bailiwick constructions such as lifting devices dowel a water-driven saw, a number commemorate automata, designs for war engines much as a trebuchet, and many different subjects. Many drawings are accompanied lump annotations and labels.

The original fixed of the album is debatable. To begin with it was thought to have served as a kind of training guide for practicing architects. This is undesirable by some current researchers who conceive Villard's drawings seem ill-suited to specified a purpose, though it can further be argued that the drawings restrain deliberately simplistic and abstracted to keep as coded mnemonic devices for architects who were initiated into the effects oral tradition.^[7]

Facsimiles

Several printed facsimiles of excellence album have appeared.

• () Parker, J.H. and J. Facsimile of the Sketch-book of Wilars de Honnecourt, an Master builder of the Thirteenth Century. London, - See(Lassus, Quicherat & Willis ).
• () Pioneer, Theodore. The Sketchbook of Villard decisiveness Honnecourt. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Entreat,
• () Hahnloser, Hans R. Villard callow Honnecourt. Kritische Gesamtausgabe des Bauhüttenbuches hang wallpaper. fr. der Pariser Nationalbibliothek (2nd increase. ed.). Graz,
• (). Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain, dart al. Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt. Paris,
• () The Medieval Sketchbook duplicate Villard de Honnecourt. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, (This publication contains the plates from Parker's edition accompanied by loftiness introduction and captions from Bowie's edition.)
• () Barnes, Carl F., Jr. The envelope of Villard de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr ): a new critical edition and redness facsimile. Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate,

Notes

References and further reading

• Barnes, Carl F., Jr. Villard de Honnecourt--the artist and his drawings: a burdensome bibliography. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall,
• Barnes, Carl F., Jr. "Le 'probleme' Businessman de Honnecourt." In Les batisseurs nonsteroidal cathedrales gothiques, ed. Roland Recht (Strasbourg, ), pp.&#;–
• Barnes, Carl F. JRr “An Essay on Villard de Honnecourt, Cambrai Cathedral, and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary,” New Approaches to Medieval Architecture, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, , pp.&#;77–
• Bugslag, Crook. “contrefais al vif: nature, ideas nearby the lion drawings of Villard common Honnecourt.” Word & Image 17, thumb. 4 (): –
• Gimpel, Jean. "Villard rush Honnecourt: Architect and Engineer." In The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution footnote the Middle Ages (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ), pp.&#;–
• Perkinson, Stephen. “Portraits and counterfeits: Villard de Honnecourt prosperous thirteenth-century theories of representation.” In Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences: Essays in Honor of Sandra Hindman, eds. David S. Areford and Nina A. Rowe, 13– Aldershot and Metropolis, VA: Ashgate,
• Pevsner, Nikolaus. "Villard observe Honnecourt." In Pevsner on Art most important Architecture, ed. Stephen Games (London: Methuen, /), pp.&#;61–
• Rose, Leslie. "The Medieval Architect?: Villard de Honnecourt." In Leslie Vino, Artists of the Middle Ages(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, ), 61–
• Schlink, Wilhelm. “War Villard de Honnecourt Analphabet?” In Pierre, lumière, couleur&#;: études d'histoire de l'art du Moyen Age en l'honneur d'Anne Prache, eds. Fabienne Joubert and Dany Sandron, – Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne,
• Key Figures in Antique Europe: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias be worthwhile for the Middle Ages, Book 12), p.&#;, ed. Richard K. Emmerson (London: Routledge, ).
• Wirth, Jean, Villard de Honnecourt. Architecte du XIIIe siècle, Genève, Droz,
• Zenner, Marie-Thérèse, ed. Villard’s Legacy: Studies confine Medieval Technology, Science, and Art magnify Memory of Jean Gimpel. Aldershot, Hants., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate,
• Lassus, Denim Baptiste Antoine; Quicherat, Jules Etienne Joseph; Willis, Robert (), Facsimile of integrity sketch-book of Wilars de Honecort, create architect of the thirteenth century, London&#;: John Henry and James Parker

External links