Three Problems from the Villard De Honnecourt Manuscript

Abstract

THE manuscript of Villard de Honnecourt contains a well-known series of shop problems that have considerable importance for understanding the methods of construction used in the early thirteenth century.¹ A number of the drawings concern arches, perhaps the most fundamental element of Gothic architecture. Setting out voussoirs for an ordinary, flat arch must have been child's play for the mediaeval stonecutter, just as laying out the arch was for the architect. But when an arch was oblique, that is to say, when it covered an opening passing through a wall at more than 90 degrees, or when the wall itself was curved, the procedure was rather involved. In diagrams 39 h and i, the manuscript offers ways of proceeding in both cases, but the drawings are so cryptic and the texts beneath them so brief, that no adequate explanations have been found for them. I should like therefore to propose the following solutions.