Until the end of the thirteenth century, and frequently during the following century as well, the architect was known as "mason", and no distinction seems to have been made with regard to specialization and rank. (1) We may assume that his professional training was that of any mason, which began with his apprenticeship as a stone cutter, and that he gradually acquired prominence because of his special gifts and his general intelligence. These led him to special tasks, which in turn probably led him to commanding technical, artistic and administrative assignments, to higher pay, and to certain exclusive social privileges. The first steps toward such a career may have been easier for the young mason who was born into a family of distinguished architects, for there is evidence that successive generations of certain families retained leading positions in the employment of the same patron.

The only known personal record of an architect's interests and concerns in the thirteenth century is the lodge book of Villard de Honnecourt .(2) What is known of Villard's life and career has been extracted from this lodge book. His name and dialect indicate that he was born in Honnecourt, a small town near Cambrai in northeastern Picardy at the frontiers of Artois and Flanders. We do not know the dates of his birth or death, but his style of drawing the human figure, his choice of architectural details and his observations imply that he was at the height of his career in the first part of the thirteenth century. We may assume that he received his early training near home, and perhaps at the large Cistercian abbey of Vaucelles, which was built between 1190 and 1216 and dedicated in 1235. (3) It is interesting to note that there is a ground plan of the choir of this church among his drawings.

Together with another architect, Pierre de Corbie, Villard designed a characteristically Cistercian end of a choir with double ambulatory and chapels. He drew the ground plan of the presbytery of the Cistercian church of Saint Stephen at Meaux, a church begun in 1163, far along by 1198 and rebuilt in 1253. He also drew an ideal ground plan of a Cistercian church with a rectangular choir. We may therefore assume that Villard worked for the Cistercians. He was also familiar with the plans of the cathedral of Cambrai and may have worked there, for he drew the ground plan of the choir and the elevation before the church was much beyond the planning stage. The cathedral was begun in 1227 and work on it proceeded until sometime between 1230 and 1231, when all building activity was interrupted. It must have been shortly after 1231 when Villard wrote of his concern for the future of this construction while sketching architectural details during building operations at the cathedral at Reims where, according to his drawings, the choir and the first bays of the nave were under construction. (4)

From Reims Villard went to Hungary, a journey he mentions on several occasions. It may be that his association with the Cistercians led to a contract there. The only artistic reminiscence of this trip is a sketch of the floor mosaic of a church.

Perhaps while on his way east, Villard added to his sketches the west towers of the cathedral at Laon of about 1210; the rose window of the west facade at Chartres of before 1215: (5) and the rose window of the south transept of the cathedral at Lausanne, also of the first quarter of the thirteenth century. (6)

It is generally assumed that Villard returned from Hungary before the Tartar invasion of 1241 and that he spent the rest of his active life in Picardy, perhaps as master of the lodge at the collegiate church at Saint Quentin, where one of the largest Cistercian abbey churches of France was then being built. (7)

Villard's lodge book was compiled informally over a period of years as he observed, sketched and recorded solutions to architectural and technological tasks, human and animal forms and selected other objects. Eventually he put the drawings into a portfolio and supplied some of them with comments. Later he added technical drawings dealing with building methods, measurement and applied geometry for the everyday needs of a stonemason's lodge.

Beyond the evidence of a competent hand in drawing, the book reveals a discerning eye and mind, astute in absorbing and evaluating a great variety of ideas; it shows a man conversant with the scientific, theoretical and artistic trends of his age. To judge from the variety of subjects his observations encompass, his tasks must have been as numerous, diverse and demanding as those of which the Roman architect Vitruvius speaks. (8)

Villard's associates at a lodge over which he presided later in his life made some additions of a practical nature to the book. Master II, who appears to have been most closely connected with Villard, added various comments and a set of detailed technical drawings relating to the stonemason's daily tasks in applied geometry and measurement. Master III contributed only some textual additions, frequently supplementing earlier entries by Villard. Neither man added to Villard's aesthetic observations or to his collection of engineering constructions and inventions.

Villard's drawings are characteristic of the artistic trends of the first quarter of the thirteenth century. His advice is sober and direct, now and then interspersed with phrases which he must have seen in existing technical literature. (9) Yet he never fails to convey his own opinion concerning the relative worth of an artistic or technical solution to a problem and he invariably points to the ingenious and to the uniquely satisfactory.

When his sketchbook became a lodge book, Villard added an opening address to the reader:

Villard de Honnecourt gives you greeting and beseeches all who will work by the aids that are found in this book to pray for his soul and bear him in remembrance. For in this book one can obtain good advice on the grand craft of maconerie and the engiens de carpenterie, and you will find in it the art of drawing . . . the principal features (les trais), as the discipline of geometry . . . requires and teaches them. (10)

Villard's drawings fall into six main categories: (1) animals; (2) human figures; (3) interior furnishings and ornaments; (4) architectural drawings; (5) carpentry and wooden constructions; (6) masonry and geometry.

In view of the love for animal representations in medieval sculpture and painting for allegorical, symbolic and decorative purposes, Villard's collection is modest; animals are rendered in conventional poses as selected from illuminated bestiaries and sample books. A generation later there was to be closer observation of nature, especially in informal scenes. The drawings of a lion and of a lion training scene are the only ones Villard claims were drawn from life. This is the more remarkable because it is quite apparent that here too he used artistic conventions taken from a model book of Byzantine, late classic or oriental derivation. (11) He says:

The lion. I will tell you of the training of the lion. He who trains the lion has two dogs. When he wants the lion to do something and the lion growls, he beats his dogs. When the lion sees the dogs being beaten he becomes afraid and does as he is told. I will not speak of the lion when he is in a rage, for then he would not do what anybody tells him, either good or bad. And you should know that this lion was drawn from life.

Hahnloser counts 163 drawings of the human figure. (12) They are an odd assortment of individuals and groups in biblical, allegorical and narrative scenes. Several times Villard copied the nude male figure from late classic or Byzantine models, indicating an interest in ancient art far greater than the obvious usefulness to him of these figures in the rendition of the nude in biblical representations.

Advanced for this moment in French art is the suffering expressed in the drawings of two crucifixions, showing Christ with crossed feet pierced by a single nail; equally expressive is a Descent from the Cross, while the bust drawing of the Virgin and Child follows the style and restrained mood of the sculpture of the cathedral of Reims of about 1230. All Villard's examples are of elegant and noble proportions and are eloquent in their gestures. As has often been observed, they reflect in their proportions, poses and drapery treatment the figure style of the transept facades at Chartres and that of the north transept and the earliest west facade statues at Reims cathedral of 1224-1230.

The lodge book also contains drawings describing a great variety of aesthetically pleasing or technically ingenious interior furnishings and ornaments. For example, Villard says of Plate 11: "Of this manner was the tomb of a heathen which 1 once saw." He shows a full-page architectural setting of a throne with a youthful ruler dressed in a toga, with a pair of standing genii (ignudi) holding a victory wreath above him and an altar with two acclaiming toga-draped male figures on either side of the altar below. One wonders whether Villard may have seen a stone relief of late Roman origin, showing the apotheosis of an emperor. Despite errors of perspective, the drawing conveys clearly the original object's compositional merits.

Of Plate 12 he says:

He who wishes to make a clock-case can see here one that I once saw. From below, the first story is square and has four gables. The story above is eight-sided and roofed, and above that four small gables, the space between two and two of them being empty. The uppermost story is square with four small gables, and the turret above is eight-sided.

And of Plate 13:

He who wishes to make a lectern from which to read the Gospel, behold the best manner of making it. First there are three serpents which rest on the ground and over them a three-lobed slab, and above that three serpents of a different kind and columns of the same height as the serpents, and over that a triangular slab. After this, you can see for yourself in what manner the lectern is made. Here is its image. In the midst of the three columns there must be a rod to carry the knob on which the eagle sits. (63)

To this group also belong three drawings of arm rests and the wing of a choir stall with a remarkably beautiful acanthus design. With this goes Villard's comment: "If you wish to make a satisfactory wing of a truly good choir stall, see this one." Similarly crisp and luxuriant foliage occurs in several other plates. (14)

Other objects in this group include a handwarmer, as we are told by Villard, for use by the officiating bishop during the cold, damp winter months. The receptacle, which looks like a brass apple, holds the charcoal in such a way that no matter how it is turned in the pocket the hot coals will not spill out. On the same page. (15) Villard shows one of several "wonders" (mirabilia) he drew: a wine or water container working like a siphon which, when activated, causes a small hollow bird perched on a tiny tower in the middle of the bowl to drink the liquid.

Judging from the number and careful execution of these drawings and the relatively detailed comments, Villard's main interest seems to have centered on demonstrating in the lodge book the excellence of architectural design and its structural and aesthetic effectiveness, down to the smallest detail. On this subject, he comments:

I have been in many countries, as you can judge from this book, but nowhere have I seen a tower such as the one at Laon. Notice the ground plan of the first story there where it springs at the level of the first windows. At this level the tower is surrounded by eight buttresses. Four square turrets rest on clusters of three colonnettes each. This is followed upward by open arches and a horizontal molding and more turrets with eight columns, and from between two of these an ox peers out. This in turn is followed by an arcade and a horizontal molding, and an eightsided helmet, each side having a slit for light. Consider this carefully, for you will learn from it about how to construct and raise such a structure and how the turrets alternate in shape. And pay good heed to your work, for if you wish to make a good tower you must choose buttresses of sufficient depth. Do apply all your attention to your work, for only then can you do that which is worthy of a wise and noble man. (16)

Behold one of the windows at Reims from the bays of the nave such as they are between two piers. I was commissioned to go to the land of Hungary when I drew it because I liked it best. (17)

Behold the ground plan of the choir of the church of Our Lady of Cambrai as it rises from the ground. Earlier in this book you will find the interior and exterior elevations and the manner in which the chapels, the plain walls and also the buttresses will look. (18)

Observe here the rising structure of the chapels of the church at Reims and how they are in the interior elevation; the interior passages and the hidden vaulted-in passages; and on this other page you can see the rising structure of the chapels of the church at Reims from the exterior from floor to top, just as they are. Of such a kind will those at Cambrai have to be if one will do them justice. The topmost story must have a battlement. (19)

Behold the drawings of the elevation of the church of Reims [and] of the wall inside and outside. The first story of the aisles must form a battlemented parapet so that a passage can lead around in front of the roof.

Against this roof on the inside are [built] passageways, and, where these passages are vaulted in and paved, there the passages lead outside, so that one can walk past along the sills of the windows.

And the topmost story must have battlements so that one can go around the roof.

Behold the manner and method of the whole elevation. (20)

Behold one of the tower piers of the church of Reims [and] one of those which stands between two chapels; and there is one which is a wall pier, and one comes from the nave of the cathedral. On all these piers the joints are as they should be. (21)

Behold the profiles of the chapels on the preceding page, of the window arches and the tracery, of the diagonal ribs and the transverse arches and wall arches above them. (22)

From the next section of the book, the chapter on carpentry and wooden constructions, a number of sketches are missing. Hahnloser ascribes this to the great demand for these drawings in the lodge. Examples of forms of timber roofs are limited to three. The majority of drawings deal with mechanical devices such as machines useful on building sites, in industry and for military operations, surprisingly similar in scope to those discussed by Vitruvius in the first century B.C. (23)

Clearly the architect continued to be called upon to function as a mechanical engineer. Villard appears completely up to date with the mechanical experiments of his own day. His book is the first to demonstrate the operation of a new waterpowered sawmill involving two separate motions; the first on record in Europe to demonstrate a perpetuum mobile, of which he says that scientists long disputed how to make a wheel turn by itself. He seems absorbed by contemporary experiments with a mechanical clock system and demonstrates a clockwork which enables an angel on top of a church steeple to turn his hand at all times toward the sun and an eagle on a church lectern which follows the words of the deacon reading the Gospel by turning his head toward him. (24)

Villard introduces the next section of his lodge book thus: "Here begins the art of drawing the principal features, as the discipline of geometry teaches, in order to enable one to work more easily;" and he says further, "On these four leaflets are figures from the discipline of geometry, but he who wants to know for which [kind of work] each figure ought to be used has to be careful to make no mistake." (25)

There follow a number of small sketches of human and animal heads and of entire figures in various poses, by themselves or in combinations of two or more, with boldly superposed geometric shapes such as the square, the rectangle, the triangle, the pentagram and so forth that fit the individual contour. Villard shows how the same geometric figure that fits the contour of a human head also fits that of a horse and how different geometric figures quay be applied to the same head. The purpose of Villard's drawings is to teach the young mason how to transfer small preparatory drawings to the size and the medium which were called for. He also demonstrates the use of the quadratic net of lines, known and used since antiquity for the determination of the standard of proportions of the human form as well as an aid in transferring a small sketch to any desired scale. Villard, however, clearly prefers his own bold method of simple geometric configurations.

Finally, Villard demonstrates the stonemason's first task, that of safe and effective building by means of mensuration. His own examples are few and highly selective. Master II wrote the text to them and added two further pages of drawings of his own with comments dealing with specific stonemason's problems, such as how to cut the voussoirs for an arch covering an oblique opening in a wall. (26)

These additional demonstrations, apparently copied from some other manual, indicate how vital these lessons in applied geometry must have been to the average stonemason in contradistinction to that which the architect had found interesting to demonstrate.

(1) Nikolaus Pevsner, "The Term 'Architect' in the Middle Ages," Speculum, XVII (1942), 549-62.

(2) Villard de Honnecourt: Kritische Gesamtausgabe des Bauhuttenbuches MS. fr. 19093 der Pariser Nationalbibliothek, ed. Hans R. Hahnloser (Vienna: Verlag von Anton Schroll & Co., 1953; for a more recent reinterpretation of some of the drawings and the text, see Frankl, The Gothic, pp.35-54. Hahnloser's facsimile reproductions should be used for the study of Villard's drawings; all references to plates give Hahnloser's pagination. Sec also the frontispiece taken from Hahnloser, plt. 20, by the permission of the publishers. Hahnloser also gives a complete bibliography up to 1935 and a history of the manuscript on pp. 5, 8, 9, 189-93, 199-200. Only 33 of the manuscript's original 63 or more leaves are left. Hahnloser's assumption that the loss occurred while the lodge book was still in great demand in the lodge where it was left has much to recommend it. We have more information about the use of lodge books and single drawings from later periods. They existed in an increasing number in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where large-scale building enterprises were under way, as at Strasbourg, Cologne, Vienna, Ulm, Prague, Esslingen, Milan, Florence, Cambridge and London, to name a few. An architect who left the service of a patron had to leave behind all drawings he had made in connection with that particular lodge. At least from the fourteenth century on, it is known that drawings frequently served to show the employer how the finished product was to look. Beginning in 1324, English documents mention "tracing houses" in the king's works in London; Pierre du Colombier, Les Chantiers des cathedrales (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1953), pp.63-64; Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, pp. 195-99.)

(3) Unless otherwise noted, dates are taken from Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, pp.226-32.

(4) Reims cathedral was begun in 1211 and the clergy entered the choir in 1241; beyond these, no definite dates are available for that part of the building. Both Hahnloser and Frankl date Villard's visit to Reims as being about 1235. Villard may, however, have been at Reims any time after 1231, when work at the cathedral of Cambrai was interrupted; Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, pp. 225-30.

(5) Louis Grodecki, "De 1200 a 1260," in Le Vitrails francais, sous la haute direction du Musee des Arts Dicoratifs de Paris (Paris: Editions des Deux Mondes, 1958), pp.115-44.

(6) Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, p.76, points out that Villard intentionally drew both rose windows-some fifteen to twenty years after their completion--to appear lighter and more delicate than they actually were, and implies that he drew them this way to accommodate the increasing demand for lightness of form.

(7) Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, pp. 231, 236-37.

(8) See Vitruvius: The Ten Books of Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914.

(9) Hahnloser, p. 4; Frankl, The Gothic, p. 48; Julius von Schlosser, "Materialien zur Quellenkunde der Kunstgeschichte," Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 177/1, "Mittelalter" (Vienna: Alfred Holder 1914), 3-102, esp. p.93.

(10) The English translation is Frankl's, p. 41; there and on following pages he changes the customary reading of the text to conform with his reinterpretation of the drawings on plates 35-38 and 39-41. Passages reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Copyright, 1960. The Old French text-"(et) si troveres lc force de le portraiture, les trais, ensi come li ars de iometrie le (com)ma(n)d(e) (et) ensaigne"-is linguistically fully expounded by Hahnloser, pp. 11-17. 272-79.

(11) Schlosser, "Materialien zur Quellenkunde," p. 93, says that "without doubt Villard did not intend to dissemble when quite clearly he did not draw from nature, for to him 'nature' meant something different from what it means to us; for a man of the Middle Ages it was impossible to consider as meaningful anything but the idea, the concept, behind the appearance of things. The natural form was like soft wax which had to yield to the artistic invention." See also Hahnloser, pp.268-72. The next two pages in Villard's notebook show several more lions in gladiatorial scenes whose prototypes go back to Roman or Byzantine manuscripts.

(12) Hahnloser, p.263.

(13) Hahnloser explains, p. 33, that the execution of this drawing is so sketchy and in such poor perspective that it may be assumed that Villard drew it from nature rather than from a sample book. It is in fact the first lectern of its type to be shown in a drawing, although soon it was to become the most commonly used type.

(14) Hahnloser, pls. 54a, b, 57; Villard's use of the acanthus ornament to the exclusion of other floral motifs, as with his use of the clinging pleated drapery, is characteristic of the generation of sculptors of the early high gothic period. A new generation of sculptors of the west facades of the cathedrals of Paris and Amiens were already using indigenous flowers and foliage.

(15) Hahnloser, pl. 17, d, e.

(16) Hahnloser, pls. 18, 19. On pp. 51 and 54 Hahnloser produces evidence of the admiration all through Europe for the towers of Laon but makes the point that Villard was the first to call attention to the harmony of proportions of single parts and the elegance of transitions from one level to the next.

(17) Hahnloser, pl. 20b, pp. 57-58 (and also see frontispiece); Hahnloser considers this "the roost personal artistic judgment of the high Middle Ages." On this same plate also appears the half-length figure of the Virgin and Child, the only representation of the Virgin and Child among Villard's drawings. (Reproduced by permission of Buch- and Kunstverlag Anton Schroll Co., Vienna).

(18) Hahnloser, pl. 28c; the drawings of the elevations are lost. Villard appears to have made all these drawings at the lodge of Cambrai with the original plans before him. When building activity was resumed in 1239 the chapels were done in a different manner.

(19) Hahnloser, pls. 60 ate, 61.

(20) Hahnloser, pl. 62, 63. The English translation of this and the preceding three paragraphs is taken from Frankl, The Gothic, p.47. Also on p.47 Frankl compares Villard's comment with one added later by Master III, who gives a simpler, purely practical interpretation to the complex and aesthetically important architectural detail which Villard had recorded.

(21) Hahnloser, pl. 63a-d.

(22) Hahnloser, pl. 63e-t.

(23) See Vitruvius, book X, where Vitruvius discusses and draws hoisting machines, water wheels, water mills, water screws, pumps, catapults, ballistae, and siege and defense machines.

(24) Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 118, 122, 131 (with note on p. 173).

(25) Hahnloser, pls. 35-38; Frankl's explanation, pp. 41-46, of both text and drawings is simple and convincing. These drawings have aroused the greatest interest and have been interpreted in various ways, though most frequently as a rigorously formal system of fitting figures into a given geometric frame to standardize proportions and beauty, that is, a theory of proportions; Henry Focillon, Art d'Occident: Le Moyen Age romain et gothique (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1938), p. 101; see also Hahnloser, pp.211-13, who speaks of Leitlinien, or guiding lines for proportions, which direct the hand of the medieval craftsman, and Schlosser, "Materialien zur Quellenkunde," p.29. Colombier, p.89, clearly observes that the geometric configurations are imposed upon the completed figures rather than preceding them, and he raises doubt about the validity of the prevailing theories.

(26) Robert Branner, "Three Problems from the Villard de Honnecourt Manuscript," The Art Bulletin, XXXIX/1 (1957), 61-66.

* Teresa G. Frisch, Gothic Art 1140 - c. 1450: Sources and Documents, University of Toronto Press in association with the Medieval Academy of America, 1987.