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

Abstract

Dating from approximately 1210 in the Champagne region of northern France, the emergence of bar tracery could be considered one of the most significant stylistic developments in the history of Western architecture. Over the subsequent decades, this innovation in window design provided the catalyst for a radical shift in design principles among medieval masons, its geometrical conception, forms, and technical composition having far-reaching consequences for the appearance of the architecture we call Gothic. Spread rapidly across France and beyond to England, Castile-Léon, and modern Germany by medieval masons, tracery quickly became the leitmotif of Gothic design, and was gradually transformed into a new mode of decoration which came to encompass the entire surface of the architectural edifice. Yet despite the widespread acknowledgment of bar tracery’s critical role within the stylistic narratives of early thirteenth-century European art, comparatively little attention has been focused on how its constitutive forms and ideas were transmitted over these long distances. Using a contemporary graphic and verbal response to bar tracery, the Villard de Honnecourt manuscript of ca. 1210–40, this article conducts a comparative analysis of three potential modes of stylistic transmission during this period: drawing, language, and personal communication via the memory. Through evaluating the relative limitations and potential of these communication media, it provides a starting point for reassessing the processes behind the dissemination of architectural ideas in northwestern Europe during the thirteenth century.