Plan B and the geometry of façade design at Strasbourg Cathedral, 1250-1350

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Volumn 64, Issue 4, 2005, Pages

  Bork, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949591929     PISSN: 00379808     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25068200     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. This is not to say that the Strasbourg drawings are the oldest survivingbuilding plans of any sort. A Mesopotamian statue of Gudea of Lagash from thelate third millennium B.C.E. features an inscribed plan on the ruler's lap, andthe Roman imperial Forma Urbis map slab includes plans of many structures in thecapital city. In the Gothic era itself, moreover, the famous notebook producedby Villard de Honnecourt a few decades before the Strasbourg drawings includesplans and elevations of many cathedrals. Villard, however, was probably nottrained as a Gothic builder, and his sketches lack the precision of the Strasbourg drawings. None of these examples, therefore, are really workshopdrawings or "blueprints" like those of the Strasbourg façade.On Villard, see Carl Barnes, "Le 'Problème' Villard de Honnecourt, " in Roland Recht, ed., Les Bâtisseurs descathédrales gothiques (Strasbourg, 1989), 209-23.
2. Plan B is preserved in Strasbourg's Musée de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame(inv. no. 3). I would like to thank Cécile Dupeux, the curator ofdrawings at the museum, for the chance to examine Plan B in July 2001. Plan Bhas, over the years, generated an extensive bibliography. Many of the relevantarticles are cited by Recht in his catalogue entry on the drawing, which appearsin Recht, Les Bâtisseurs, 386-88.
3. The most extensive recent article on Plan B in particular is Reinhard Liess, "Der Riss B der Strassburger Münsterfassade. Einebaugeschictliche Revision, " in Orient und Okzident in Spiegel der Kunst.Festschrift Heinrich Gerbard Franz zum 70 Geburtstag (Graz, 1986), 171-202.
4. The relationship between Plan B and the present Strasbourg façadeis discussed by Recht in L'Alsace gothique de 1300 à 1365. Étuded'architecture religieuse (Colmar, 1974), 36-54,
5. and by Reinhard Wortmann in a series of articles culminating in"Noch einmal Strassburg-West, " Architectura 27, no. 2 (1997), 129-72.The present article, with its more geometrical orientation, is intended as acomplement to these studies.
6. This frequently cited passage is reproduced, for example, in Teresa Frisch, Gothic Art 1140-c. 1450: Sources and Documents (Toronto, 1987), 55.Drawings may well have been used in medieval architecture long before 1200, butcomments like Biard's, together with the increasingly prevalent survival ofdrawings after 1200, suggest that the relative importance of and prestige ofarchitectural drawing grew markedly over the course of the thirteenth century.
7. Robert Mark, "Structural Experimentation in Gothic Architecture, " American Scientist 66 (Sept.-Oct. 1978), 548-49.
8. The rise of drawing surely facilitated the development of complexarchitectural forms, but it also reflected the growing taste for such forms, as Christopher Wilson notes in The Gothic Cathedral (London, 1990), 140-42.
9. Figure 5 shows a computer-generated version of Plan A created by theauthor and superposed on one-half of the nave section published as pl. 5 in Georg Dehio, Das Strassburger Münster (Munich, 1941).
10. Recht has proposed that this proportional adjustment may have beenintended to make the facade block stronger in structural terms. See Recht, L'Alsace gothique, 36-54. This plausible suggestion, however, does not explainthe original proportions of the Plan B façade.
11. Cologne Plan F has been plausibly dated to ca. 1300 by former Cologne Cathedral supervising architect Arnold Wolff, in publications such as The Cathedral of Cologne (Stuttgart, 1989), 13-14. More recently, Marc Steinmann hasargued that the drawing could have been completed as early as 1280, but thisrevisionist assessment depends on rather optimistic reading of the evidence, especially that from numerous tracery comparisons.
12. Marc Steinmann, Die Westfassade des Kölner Domes. Dermitlelalterliche Fassadenplan F (Cologne, 2003).
13. Jean Bony, The English Decorated Style (Ithaca, 1979), 20-21. The formalanalogy between the Plan B spire scheme and the Montjoies comes throughespecially clearly if one accepts Joan Evans's argument that the spirelikeroadside marker shown together with the meeting of the Magi in the Très Riches Heures de Jean de Berri (fol. 51v) actually represents one of thenow-destroyed Montjoies on the outskirts of Paris.
14. See Joan Evans, "A Prototype of the Eleanor Crosses, " Burlingon Magazine 91 (Apr. 1949), 96-99. Both Liess and Wortmann observe that originalconstruction lines made by the master of the red ink could underlie the laterblack ink seen in the added portions of Plan B.
15. See Liess, "Der Riss B, " 174,
16. and Wortmann, "Noch einmal Strassburg-West, " 139.
17. For the fourteenth-century date, see Roland Recht, Le Dessind'architecture. Origine et fonctions (Paris, 1995), 62-63.
18. For a good basic discussion of Goethe's sources and impact on thehistoriography of Gothic architecture, see Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Sources and Literary Interpretations through Eight Centuries (Princeton, 1960), esp. 418-26.
19. See also John Gage, Goethe on Art (Berkeley, 1980), 103-23.
20. Klotz's elaborated reconstruction appears, for example, as fig. 168 in Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture: Revised Edition, ed. Paul Crossley (New Haven, 2000);
21. as fig. 99 in Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral (see n. 5);
22. as fig. XI. 25 in Marilyn Stokstad, Medieval Art (New York, 1988);
23. and as fig. 23 in Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions (New York, 1996),
24. having been reproduced earlier in many German publications, such as Georg Dehio and Gustav Von Bezold, Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes(Stuttgart, 1887-1901), pl. 481.
25. For a good recent survey of the literature on the Erwin problem, see Charlotte Stanford, "Building Civic Pride: Strasbourg Cathedral1300- 1349" (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2003), 7-19.
26. and subsequently in "Der Westbau des Strassburger Münsters und Meister Erwin, " Bonner Jahrbüch 169 (1969), 290-318. More recently, Recht has come to broadly similar conclusions.
27. Roland Recht, La Cathédrale de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, 1993), 53-55,
28. and Les Bâtisseurs, 384-88. Liess, meanwhile, has used a wholeseries of articles to champion the increasingly unfashionable notion that Erwinwas responsible not only for most of Plan B, but also for most of the present Strasbourg façade design up to level of the tower platform. Wortmanndecisively rejects this view in the latest major article on the façade, "Noch einmal Strassburg-West."
29. The scholarly debate about the Strasbourg façade in general isusefully sketched by Paul Crossley in Frankl, Gothic Architecture, 337-38, esp.n. 111.
30. Saint-Denis, however, was not the only source for the Strasbourg navedesign. Burgundian influences also may have played a role. See Stanford, "Building Civic Pride, " 48-49;
31. Frankl, Gothic Architecture, 134, 326 n. 4;
32. and Anne Prache, "La Nef de la cathédrale de Strasbourg etl'architecture rayonnante en Champagne, " Bulletin de la Cathédralede Strasbourg 15 (1982), 99-103.
33. See also Louis Grodecki, "Les Arcs boutants de la cathédralede Strasbourg et leur origine, " Gesta 15, nos. 1 and 2 (1976), 43-51.
34. Yves Gallet, "La Nef de la cathédrale de Strasbourg, sa dateet sa place dans l'architecture gothique rayonnante, " Bulletin de la Cathédrale de Strasbourg 25 (2002), 49-82.
35. For a discussion of the Saint-Urbain elevation and its geometry, see Michael Davis and Linda Neagley, "Mechanics and Meaning: Plan Design at Saint-Urbain, Troyes and Saint-Ouen, Rouen, " Gesta 39, no. 2 (2000), 173-74. The proportional and geometrical relationships between Saint-Urbain andthe Strasbourg nave are particularly striking since Saint-Urbain includesunusual formal features, such as the single set of flying buttressses withinscribed rosettes at their heads, that had been introduced earlier at Strasbourg. Davis and the author hope to explore the possible links between the Strasbourg and Saint-Urbain workshops at greater length in a future publication.
36. On the importance of the "ad triangulum" and "adquadratum" schemes in Gothic design, see Maria Velte, Die Anwendung der Quadratur und Triangulatur bei der Grund- und Aufrissgestaltung der gotischen Kirchen (Basel, 1951);
37. Francois Bucher, "Medieval Architectural Design Methods, " Gesta11, no. 2 (1972), 37-51;
38. Nancy Wu, ed., Ad Quadratum: The Practical Application of Geometry in Medieval Architecture (Aldershot, 2002);
39. and Werner Müller, Grundlagen gotischer Bautechnik (Munich, 1990), esp. 39-110.
40. The first of the drawings in the so-called Reims Palimpsest likelypredates Plan A by several decades, but Peter Kurmann has recently argued thatit should be understood as a goldsmith's drawing for a shrine rather than anarchitectural workshop drawing for a full-scale façade. See his"Architecture, vitrail, et orfèvrerie. À propos des premiersdessins d'édifices gothiques, " Repré sentationsarchitecturales dans les vitraux (Liège, 2002), 33-41. The second drawingin the palimpsest has usually been seen as roughly contemporary with Plan A.
41. and Wortmann, "Noch einmal Strassburg-West, " 129-38.
42. On the Amiens screen front, see Stephen Murray, Notre-Dame, Cathedral of Amiens (Cambridge, England, 1996), 93.
43. For a short but useful overview of the patronage situation in Strasbourg, see Henry Kraus, Gold Was the Mortar (London, 1979), 110-30.
44. The importance of civic pride in fueling the Strasbourg façadeproject is also discussed in Robert Bork, "Into Thin Air: France, Germany, and the Invention of the Openwork Spire, " Art Bulletin 85 (Mar. 2003), 25-53.
45. On the fifteenth century, see Barbara Schock-Werner, Das Strassburger Münster im 15. Jahrhundert. Stilistische Entwicklung und Hüttenorganisation eines Bürger-Doms (Cologne, 1983).
46. See also Robert Bork, Great Spires: Skyscrapers of the New Jerusalem(Cologne, 2003), 240-54.
47. Recht, Le Dessin, 62-63 (see n. 12).
48. Because this process of extrapolation, or "pulling out, " playedsuch an important role in late Gothic design, German builders used the term"Auszug" when describing the elevation of their structures. See Lon R.Shelby, Gothic Design Techniques: The Fifteenth-Century Design Booklets of Mathes Roriczer and Hanns Schmuttermayer (Carbondale, 1977), esp. 76-79.
49. Wortmann takes basically this position, arguing that Plan B guided theconstruction of the lower façade, but that small ad hoc changes wereintroduced when the templates were made to cut the individual components of thefaçade. In his view, such slight adjustments were necessary simplybecause Plan B was not precise enough to guide construction. As an example ofthis inaccuracy, he points out that the rightmost panel of the set of six in the Plan B tower triforium is perceptibly smaller than the other five. See"Noch Einmal Strassburg-West, " 145 n. 79. This fairly inconsequentialanomaly could arise because the subdivision of the triforium bays does notinvolve the governing octagonal geometry that defined the construction lines in Plan B, which are quite precise. As my text discussion notes, the changes ofproportion between Plan B and the present façade likely reflect notdissatisfaction with the imprecision of Plan B, but rather the recognition thata global rethinking of the façade block's geometrical structure couldfacilitate its layout on the building site.
50. On the Erwin problem, see Wortmann, "Noch einmal Strassburg-West, " 164-67,
51. See Norbert Nussbaum, German Gothic Church Architecture (New Haven, 2000), esp. 56-59, 90-93.
52. See Bork, Great Spires, 40-57 (see n. 36).
53. Bork, "Into Thin Air, " 35-36 (see n. 35).
54. I presented some of these results in "The Geometry of Tower Planningfor Saint Stephen's in Vienna" (lecture, Courtauld Institute, London, Nov.2003;
55. International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Mich., May 2004).
56. Two of the graphics related to the Saint Stephen's tower geometry appearin my brief note, "New Perspectives on the Compass as a Tower Design Tool, " AVISTA Forum Journal 14, no. 1 (2004), 39-41.