El “Ochavo de La Guardia”, ¿tórico o esférico?

Abstract

The masonry manuscript written by Alonso de Vandelvira gives to four constructive elements the name of a specific place, which highlights the special importance of these pieces. One of them is the “Ochavo de La Guardia”, a piece that covers the presbytery of a church with a vault solved “por cruceros”; that is to say, a network of ribs, which support a plementery. The proposal developed by Vandelvira in his manuscript compares it with the “Vault of Murcia”, which presents toroidal intrados. This paper analyzes both the geometry of the vault built in the presbytery of the church in La Guardia de Jaén -which gives its name to the archetypeby photogrammetry and laser scanner; as well as the tracing included in the manuscript, highlighting the similarities and differences between both of them, the use of a spherical intrados and Vandelvira’s interest in the tracing process and not only in the geometric result.