Villard de Honnecourt and Bar Tracery: Reims Cathedral and Processes of Stylistic Transmission, ca. 1210–40

Hillson, James

doi:10.1086/709992

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The use of drawings should also facilitate the exchange of architectural ideas between workshops separated from each other both in space and in time (Scheller 1995, pp. 181-83; See also Hillson 2020). All of these telltale characteristics can already be seen in the early Gothic architectural culture of twelfth-century France.…”

Section: The Debate About 12th-century Drawings and Its Stakesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Paper Thin? The Evidence for 12th-Century Gothic Design Drawings

Bork

2023

Arts

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No Gothic design drawings on paper or parchment have survived from the 12th century, and only a few have survived from the 13th century. For this reason, most recent scholars tend to concur at least broadly with Robert Branner, who argued in an influential 1963 article that such drawings were first produced only after 1200. This conclusion deserves critical re-examination, however, for two principal reasons. First, the continuity of the Gothic architectural tradition in both time and space strongly suggests that early Gothic builders used similar techniques to those used by their late Gothic successors. From this perspective, the lack of surviving design drawings from before 1200 seems likely to reflect their disappearance over time, rather than their not being used in the crucial period when the conventions of Gothic design and construction were first coming into focus. A second argument for the use of drawings in the 12th century comes from consideration of early Gothic buildings, whose complex and carefully calibrated forms would be literally inconceivable without such graphic aids. Churches such as Saint-Denis Abbey and Notre-Dame in Paris, for example, already display a level of geometrical sophistication and coherence that argues strongly for the use of scaled drawings in their original conception.

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Section: The Debate About 12th-century Drawings and Its Stakesmentioning

confidence: 98%