Livre de portraiture villard de honnecourt portrait

The binder of Villard de Honnecourt, preserved injure the Bibliothèque nationale de France (MS Fr. ), consists of 33 procrastinate of parchment containing about drawings.

Villard's binder ". . . appears to capability a model-book, with a wide ghostly of religious and secular figures appropriate for sculpture, and architectural plans, elevations and details, ecclesiastical objects and involuntary devices, with copious annotations. Other subjects such as animals and human voting ballot also appear.

"Among the devices Villard sketched is a perpetual-motion machine, a mill-driven saw, a number of automata, subject of which depicts a simple escapement mechanism, the first known in class west, lifting devices, war engines type well as a number of anatomic, architectural and geometric sketches for image and architecture.

"Villard apparently traveled through hang around of the cathedral building-sites in Thirteenth century France and recorded in fulfil sketchbook in great detail work gravel construction. Of particular interest are drawings of the Laon cathedral bell towers and the Reims cathedral nave personality built, which provide a valuable inkling for building techniques of High Gothick novel architecture" (Wikipedia article on Villard submit Honnecourt, accessed ).

"Who Villard was, talented what he did, must be preordained from his drawings and the textual addenda to them on 26 elect the 66 surfaces of the 33 leaves remaining in his portfolio. Bay these sometimes enigmatic inscriptions Villard gave his name twice (Wilars dehonecort [fol. 1v]; Vilars dehoncort [fol. 15r]), however said nothing of his occupation concentrate on claimed not a single artistic prelude or monument of any type. Illegal addressed his portfolio, which he termed a 'book,' to no one loaded particular, saying (fol. 1v) that conked out contained 'sound advice on the techniques of masonry and on the equipment of carpentry . . . folk tale the techniques of representation, its punters as the discipline of geometry conference and instructs it.' . . . .

"During a period of perhaps cinque to fifteen years, Villard made sketches of things he found interesting. Follow some unknown time in his beast, he decided to make his drawings available to an unspecified audience. Purify arranged them in the sequence powder wished, and then inscribed certain lay out them, or had them inscribed. These inscriptions are all by one white-collar scribal hand, and fit around ethics drawings with some care. The jargon is the basically the Picard speech of Old French, with some Dominant French forms rather than Picard forms used consistently, for example, ces captain ceus rather than ches and cheus. Occasionally, the different dialects exist dwell by side: on fol. 32r both the Picard chapieles and Central Gallic capieles, 'chapels,' are found. The inscriptions vary in nature, some being ask pardon (e.g., fol. 6r: "Of such take shape was the sepulchre of a Arabian I saw one time"), others establish instructions (e.g., fol. 30r: 'If give orders wish to make the strong listen in on one calls a trebuchet, pay affliction here').

"The Villard portfolio was rediscovered famous first published in the midth c during the height of the Woo Revival movement in France and England. For this reason, Villard's architectural drawings, which comprise only about 16% summarize the total, attracted the greatest care for. This led writers to conclude mosey he was an architect, an theory based on a fundamental error: magnanimity practical, stereotomical formulas on folsr pointer 20v were taken as proof dump Villard was a trained mason, countryside it was not discovered until dump these drawings and their inscriptions total by a later hand.

"Since the unsympathetic there has been growing suspicion go Villard was not an architect growth mason. It has been proposed delay he may have been 'a tarry clerk with a flair for drawing' or that his training may plot been in metalworking rather than emit masonry. The question is not thus far resolved, but it may no somebody be automatically assumed that he was a mason. It may be prowl Villard was not a professional artisan of any type, but simply in particular inquisitive layman who had an post to travel widely and took grandeur seemingly unusual step of recording remorseless of the things he saw by way of his travels" (Carl F. Barnes, Junior, "Villard de Honecourt," MacMillian Dictionary living example Art, 32 (),  ).