Villard de Honnecourt
Encyclopedia
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...
in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio of 33 sheets of parchment
Parchment
Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned; therefore, it is very...
containing about 250 drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
s dating from the 1220s/1240s, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
(MS Fr 19093). The great variety of subjects (religious and secular figures suitable for sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, and architectural plan
Architectural plan
An architectural plan is a plan for architecture, and the documentation of written and graphic descriptions of the architectural elements of a building project including sketches, drawings and details.- Overview :...
s, elevations and details, ecclesiastical objects and mechanical devices
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
, some with annotations), makes it difficult to determine its purpose. Other subjects such as animals and human figures also appear.
The traditional view, since the discovery of the portfolio in the mid-19th century, is that Villard was an itinerant architect/mason/builder, but there is no evidence of him ever working as an architect or in any other identifiable profession. None the less, it is clear from his drawings that he was interested in architecture and that 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 vessel bay, interior and exterior, of Reims Cathedral
Reims Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...
are of particular interest.
Villard tells us, with pride, that he had been in many lands (Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres) and that he made a trip to Hungary where he remained many days (maint ior), but he does not say why he went there or who sent him. It has recently been proposed that he may have been a lay agent or representative of the cathedral chapter of Cambrai Cathedral to obtain a relic of St. Elizabeth of Hungary who had made a donation to the cathedral chapter and to whom the chapter dedicated one of the radiating chapels in their new cathedral chevet.
Among the mechanical devices Villard sketched are a perpetual-motion machine, a water-driven saw, a number of automata
Automata
Automata is the plural form of automaton, a self-operating machine. It may also refer to:* "Automata", a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann* "Automata", a hardboiled science fiction crime series by Penny Arcade...
, lifting devices, war engines (a trebuchet) as well as a number of anatomical and geometric sketches for portraiture and architecture. The claim that he drew a simple escapement
Escapement
In mechanical watches and clocks, an escapement is a device that transfers energy to the timekeeping element and enables counting the number of oscillations of the timekeeping element...
mechanism, the first known in the West, is now questioned.
Villard's vast diversity in his sketchbook has caused him to be compared to such great minds as Leonardo Da Vinci, who also specialized in many different categories of art and science.
External links
- Dr. Carl F. Barnes, Jr. website: The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt. Barnes is the undisputed authority on this enigmatic figure. See Barnes's The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, A New Critical Edition and Color Facsimile. (Ashgate Publishing ltd.), 2009.
- AVISTA is a scholarly Villard de Honnecourt society for interdisciplinary study of medieval technology, science and art.
- La Cathedrale et Villard de Honnecourt at the French National Library has a sizeable number of sheets from Villard's portfolio.
- Association Villard de Honnecourt à Honnecourt" mail: villarddehonnecourt@free.fr