Richard of St Victor's Solutions to Problems of Architectural Representation in the Twelfth Century

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues that Richard of St Victor's twelfth-century architectural drawings for his historical exegesis of Ezekiel's vision of the Temple of Jerusalem is more sophisticated than the historiography has suggested to date. In his commentary, Richard provided plans and elevations for a number of different buildings, including the Temple's gatehouse. When attempting to convey the dimensions of the gatehouse, he made a distinction between measurements taken as if along a flat plane and those that take the slope of the mountain into account, calling these planum and superficies respectively, words that indicate a strong correlation to contemporary practices in geometry. When he wished to illustrate the dimensions of a gatehouse's interior, he included a lateral section of the building, which is possibly the earliest in existence. The use of the term planum (similar in meaning to the subsequent word ‘plan’) and the appearance of a section are unusually early, although there is still no evidence that Richard's work directly influenced later architectural drawings.