Book Illumination and Luxury Arts
Paris’s claim as the intellectual center of Gothic Europe (see “Scholas-
ticism,” page 466) did not rest solely on the stature of its university
faculty and on the reputation of its architects, masons, sculptors, and
stained-glass makers. The city was also a renowned center for the
production of fine books. The famous Florentine poet Dante
Alighieri (1265–1321), in fact, referred to Paris in his Divine Comedy
of about 1310–1320 as the city famed for the art of illumination.^2
During the Gothic period, book manufacture shifted from monastic
scriptoria shut off from the world to urban workshops of profes-
sional artists—and Paris had the most and best workshops. The own-
ers of these new, for-profit secular businesses sold their products to
the royal family, scholars, and prosperous merchants. The Parisian
shops were the forerunners of modern publishing houses.
VILLARD DE HONNECOURTOne of the most intriguing
Parisian manuscripts preserved today was not, however, a book for sale
but a personal sketchbook. Compiled by Villard de Honnecourt,
an early-13th-century master mason, its pages contain details of build-
ings, plans of choirs with radiating chapels, church towers, lifting
devices, a sawmill, stained-glass windows, and other subjects of obvi-
ous interest to architects and masons. But also sprinkled liberallythroughout the pages are drawings depicting religious and worldly
figures, as well as animals, some realistic and others purely fantastic.
On the page reproduced here (FIG. 18-31), Villard demonstrated
the value of the ars de geometria (“art of geometry”) to artists. He
showed that both natural forms and buildings are based on simple
geometric shapes such as the square, circle, and triangle. Even
where he claimed to have drawn his animals from nature, he com-
posed his figures around a skeleton not of bones but of abstract
geometric forms. Geometry was, in Villard’s words, “strong help in
drawing figures.”GOD AS ARCHITECTGeometry also played a symbolic role
in Gothic art and architecture. Gothic artists, architects, and theolo-
gians alike thought the triangle, for example, embodied the idea of
the Trinity of God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The circle,
which has neither a beginning nor an end, symbolized the eternity of
the one God. When Gothic architects based their designs on the art
of geometry, building their forms out of abstract shapes laden with
symbolic meaning, they believed they were working according to the
divinely established laws of nature.
A vivid illustration of this concept appears as the frontispiece
(FIG. 18-32) of a moralized Bible produced in Paris during the18-31Villard de Honnecourt,figures based on geometric shapes,
folio 18 verso of a sketchbook, from Paris, France, ca. 1220–1235. Ink
on vellum, 9^1 – 4 6 . Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
On this page from his private sketchbook, the master mason Villard
de Honnecourt sought to demonstrate that simple geometric shapes
are the basis of both natural forms and buildings.18-32God as architect of the world, folio 1 verso of a moralized
Bible, from Paris, France, ca. 1220–1230. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf
on vellum, 1 11 – 2 81 – 4 .O..
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
Paris was the intellectual capital of Europe and the center of production
of fine books. This artist portrayed God as an industrious architect
creating the universe using the same tools as Gothic builders.French Gothic 4811 in.1 in.