ESSAY

ON

WILARS DE HONECORT AND HIS SKETCH-BOOK,

BY M. JULES QUICHERAT.

{Extracted from the Revue Archeologique for 1849, t. vi. p. 65.)

V

^IIE uncertainty which prevails with respect to the practical methods employedby the mediseval artists, and our absolute ignorance of the manner in whichthey were taught and trained, must create an interest in the description of amanuscript, unique of its kind, which is apparently the sketch-book of an archi-tect of the thirteenth century.

This singular work, which we shall term an Album, is contained in the collectionof manuscripts from the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres deposited in the ImperialLibrary at Paris , (S. G. Latin , 1,104). It is a small volume of thirty-three leaves ofvellum stitched into a thick rough leather cover a , which wraps over the frontedge of the leaves. A memorandum written in the fifteenth century on the lastpage records that the book then contained forty-one leaves, but the mutilations bywhich their number has been reduced to thirty-three are apparently of consider-able age. The leaves are not all cut to the same size, their dimensions vary-ing from 6 to 6| inches in breadth, and from 9 to 9J in height. Each of themis occupied with pen and ink drawings that have been previously sketched with alead point, and many of the drawings are accompanied by explanatory noteswritten in the Picard dialect of the thirteenth century, and in the running-handof that period.

This manuscript was known to Willemin, who selected from it a sufficientnumber of figures to compose a plate of costumes for his Monuments FranqaisInedits 10 , and M. Pottier accordingly examined it, and concisely described it in the

A more detailed account of tlie volume is givenm the following chapter.

b Willemin’s Monuments Franqais Inedits, pub-lished at Paris in 1839, was commenced in 1806.The descriptive text was written by Pottier. In pi.102, vol. i., Willemin engraved several subjects from

the manuscript of De Honecort, and to this plate thefollowing description is supplied:—“Le volume quia fourni ces costumes, dessines au simple trait, estun recueil extremement singulier et digne de tout l’in-teret des artistes, e’est VAlbum le calepin d’un artistedu xiii e . siecle, qui a depose sur ses pages toutes les

B