Villard de Honnecourt

Flourished 1200-1250
Mason and architect

Sources

Early Life and Career. Biographies of Villard de Hon-necourt are filled with conjectures, some more romantic and appealing than others. Everyone agrees that he was born in Picardy in northern France near the beginning of the thirteenth century. The only source of information about him from near that time is Villard’s sketchbook, which comprises approximately sixty-six pages and two hundred and fifty drawings. According to this source, he had “been in many lands” and “had been sent to the land of Hungary” where he “remained many days.” Such a trip would have taken several months and was remarkable for a medieval European of his class. Beyond this basic information, most of the facts of his biography are in dispute. His name does not appear in any surviving contracts, guild registers, payment receipts, or inscriptions—the most common sources of information about medieval masons. He is commonly believed to have been a master mason and architect who compiled his sketchbook while traveling around France looking for work. Where he received his training is unclear, although it has been suggested that he attended a monastic school, a plausible education for a medieval mason. Some have speculated that Villard worked on many of the major monuments depicted in his sketchbook—such as the cathedrals at Rheims, Chartres, Laon, Meaux, and Lausanne—but Villard mentioned only his work at Lausanne. Other scholars have pointed to his drawings of mechanical objects, such as trebuchets, and have called him an inspired inventor and tinkerer. Still others have described him as merely an interested layman with a gift for drawing. Whatever the truth about Villard’s life, his travels and the content of his sketchbook challenge modern notions that medieval people lived isolated and insular lives and that they were interested only in theology, not in technology. Villard’s interests were wide-ranging and worldly.

The Sketchbook. The objects described and drawn in Villard’s sketchbook fall into roughly ten categories: animals, architecture, carpentry, church furnishings, geometry, masonry, mechanical devices, people, recipes or formulas, and surveying. These categories do not do justice to the range of his drawings; his “people,” for example, include sketches as diverse as a medieval king, dancers, and “the sepulchre of a Saracen.” The accuracy of his drawings varies widely. This inconsistency has caused some scholars to question Villard’s status as a master architect and mason and to dispute the nineteenth-century claim that his sketchbook was designed to guide young masons and architects. Instead, the sketchbook is most commonly described as an album or record of his voyages that was intended to serve much the same purpose as a scrapbook or photo album for a modern traveler. Whatever Villard’s technical weaknesses, he was a fascinated viewer of medieval technology. When he visited the cathedral of Rheims, which had already been under construction for ten to twenty years, Villard drew examples of buttresses, interior walkways, and windows. He apparently even studied the architectural plans for the building and included excerpts in his notebook. He also included examples of the many small, decorative objects—such as bronze statues, engravings, and sculptures—that were commonly found in cathedrals during the medieval period but since then have in many cases been lost. Alongside a drawing of a portable candleholder, Villard wrote: “See here a sconce that is good for monks in order to carry their burning candles. You are able to make it if you know how to design.” How to make one is obvious from the picture.

Sources

Carl F. Barnes Jr., “Villard de Honnecourt,” in The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner, 34 volumes (New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 1996), XXXII: 569-571.

Villard de Honnecourt, The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, edited by Theodore Bowie, second edition, revised (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962).