VILLANDRANDO, RODRIGO DE
(ca. 1380-ca. 1455). Born in Castile, Rodrigo de Villandrando traveled to France to
pursue a career in arms. He began in Burgundian service but joined the dauphin Charles
after establishing his own company in 1420. Able but unreliable, he won fame after 1435
for his command of a formidable band of écorcheurs. His undisciplined troops ravaged
France by living off the land and extorting money from the cities and estates of
Languedoc. As the greatest mercenary of his era, Villandrando incarnated the need for
military reform. He returned to Castile once reform began in 1439 and died there in
retirement.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: BRIGAND/BRIGANDAGE]
Contamine, Philippe. Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: étude sur les armées des rois de
France, 1337–1494. Paris: Mouton, 1972.
Quicherat, Jules. Rodrigue de Villandrando. Paris: Hachette, 1879.
Tuetey, Alexandre. Les écorcheurs sous Charles VII. Montbéliard: Barbier, 1874.
VILLARD DE HONNECOURT
(Wilars dehonecort; Vilars dehoncort; fl. 1220–30). Picard artist now known only
through a portfolio of thirty-three parchment leaves of drawings in Paris (B.N. fr. 19093).
Some leaves have been lost from the portfolio; the maximum number that can be proven
to be lost is thirteen, with the possible loss of two additional leaves.
Villard addressed his drawings to an unspecified audience, saying that his “book”
contained “sound advice on the techniques of msonry and on the devices of carpentry...
and the techniques of representation, its features as the discipline of geometry commands
and instructs it.” The subjects of Villard’s drawings are animals, architecture, carpentry,
church furnishings, geometry, humans, masonry, mechanical devices, recipes or
formulae, and surveying.
Villard traveled extensively, and most of the identifiable monuments that he drew date
to the first quarter of the 13th century. He drew, and perhaps visited, the cathedrals of
Cambrai, Chartres, Laon, Meaux, Reims, and the abbey of Vaucelles in France; the
cathedral of Lausanne in Switzerland; and the abbey of Pilis in Hungary.
There is no documentary evidence that Villard designed or built any church anywhere
or that he was in fact an architect. It has been proposed that he may have been “a lodge
clerk with a flair for drawing” or that his training may have been in metalworking rather
than masonry. It may be that Villard was not a professional craftsman but rather an
inquisitive layman who had an opportunity to travel widely.
Carl F.Barnes, Jr.
[See also: CAMBRAI; CHARTRES; LAON; MEAUX; REIMS]
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1810