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Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture
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Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752). This special issue belongs to the section "Visual Arts".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 11541

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Costanza Beltrami

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Department of History of Art and Centre for Visual Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2JD, UK
Interests: Gothic architecture in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; the Gothic-to-Renaissance transition; architectural drawings; medieval Spain

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In his notorious assessment of medieval architecture, Giorgio Vasari attacked those buildings that ‘have more the quality of seeming to have been made of paper, than of stone or marble’. Nonetheless, ‘paper architecture’ can be marvellous rather than flimsy: in the late-fourteenth century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Hautdesert Castle has such fair spires, chalk-white chimneys, and painted pinnacles that it looks like a paper cut-out. This is an architecture of make-believe. However, cut-outs bridge the imagined and the practical, from Master WG’s sophisticated vault designs to more common templates (such as the set for a window of Tervuren Castle, Belgium) and drawings. Cutting and folding can actively generate ideas: according to the ninth-century geographer al-Yaʿqūbī, the minaret of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo is modelled after a piece of paper (or perhaps papyrus) that had been rolled up absentmindedly by the commissioning sultan. Fragile paper was clearly a site for both highly controlled geometrical design and creative play, a freedom traditionally attributed to the Renaissance.

This Special Issue will consider paper, parchment and papyrus as instruments and subjects for medieval architectural imaginations. Articles may focus on the usefulness and fragility of cut-outs, templates, drawings, and papier mâché models; on temporary, unrealisable, or fictional buildings; on cutting, folding, rolling, turning over as paper-bound forms of design; on the artistic uses and representations of paper, parchment, papyrus, and other ‘paper-like’ materials. More broadly, they could consider paper’s relationship to other media, and the paper and other supports in the historiography of medieval and Renaissance architecture.

Dr. Costanza Beltrami
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • architecture
  • middle Ages
  • renaissance
  • paper
  • drawing
  • fictional buildings
  • craft

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

47 pages, 39256 KiB  
Article
Gothic Locks: Pioneering Drawings for Hydraulic Works in 16th-Century Holland
by Merlijn Hurx
Arts 2024, 13(5), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050151 - 2 Oct 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 973
Abstract
Just as Gothic cathedrals have long dominated the perception of medieval architecture, the spectacular drawings of the German lodges have shaped our view of the medieval design process. However, their towering importance has diverted scholarly attention from alternative drafting practices and reinforced the [...] Read more.
Just as Gothic cathedrals have long dominated the perception of medieval architecture, the spectacular drawings of the German lodges have shaped our view of the medieval design process. However, their towering importance has diverted scholarly attention from alternative drafting practices and reinforced the view of a homogeneous Gothic design practice based on quadrature. Historians generally accept that in the 16th century a new Renaissance graphic language challenged and ultimately replaced the Gothic tradition north of the Alps. However, this antagonistic narrative of one dominant practice superseding the other needs to be re-examined because hitherto neglected drawings for other types of buildings reveal that medieval drafting practice was more varied and open to new developments than is often believed. This paper will examine three rare sets of architectural drawings, together consisting of over thirty sheets, made for three stone sluices in the provinces of Utrecht and Holland between 1556 and 1563. They show that for technically demanding hydraulic works, drawings directed every step of the process, from enabling discussion of the most suitable design to guiding the stonemasons in the execution of the work. Moreover, they demonstrate that for such projects, Gothic masters did not adhere to tradition but engaged with new design methods, using scale, colour, and multiple views to convey all aspects of the project, thus indicating that changes in style and method were not always interrelated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture)
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21 pages, 15954 KiB  
Article
Paper Thin? The Evidence for 12th-Century Gothic Design Drawings
by Robert Bork
Arts 2023, 12(6), 220; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060220 - 24 Oct 2023
Viewed by 4289
Abstract
No Gothic design drawings on paper or parchment have survived from the 12th century, and only a few have survived from the 13th century. For this reason, most recent scholars tend to concur at least broadly with Robert Branner, who argued in an [...] Read more.
No Gothic design drawings on paper or parchment have survived from the 12th century, and only a few have survived from the 13th century. For this reason, most recent scholars tend to concur at least broadly with Robert Branner, who argued in an influential 1963 article that such drawings were first produced only after 1200. This conclusion deserves critical re-examination, however, for two principal reasons. First, the continuity of the Gothic architectural tradition in both time and space strongly suggests that early Gothic builders used similar techniques to those used by their late Gothic successors. From this perspective, the lack of surviving design drawings from before 1200 seems likely to reflect their disappearance over time, rather than their not being used in the crucial period when the conventions of Gothic design and construction were first coming into focus. A second argument for the use of drawings in the 12th century comes from consideration of early Gothic buildings, whose complex and carefully calibrated forms would be literally inconceivable without such graphic aids. Churches such as Saint-Denis Abbey and Notre-Dame in Paris, for example, already display a level of geometrical sophistication and coherence that argues strongly for the use of scaled drawings in their original conception. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture)
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17 pages, 5508 KiB  
Article
Ephemeral Icons: Construction and Representation of Temporary Votive Chapels in Old Russian Religious Rituals
by Emma Louise Leahy
Arts 2023, 12(2), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020080 - 14 Apr 2023
Viewed by 2383
Abstract
The collective ritual of building one-day votive churches (obydennye khramy) was practiced in the European north of Russia between the late 14th and 17th centuries. The product of a syncretism between Orthodox Christianity and native folklore, the ritual’s purpose was to [...] Read more.
The collective ritual of building one-day votive churches (obydennye khramy) was practiced in the European north of Russia between the late 14th and 17th centuries. The product of a syncretism between Orthodox Christianity and native folklore, the ritual’s purpose was to deliver the community from epidemic disease. One-day churches were built of freshly cut logs, on virgin ground, in a prominent place, such as a town square or crossroads. According to local belief, votive objects made from natural materials were simultaneously temporary and eternal; this paper interrogates how one-day churches fit this model. Obydennye khramy were ephemeral structurally, processually, and circumstantially. These were simple, rudimentary votive structures, not built to last nor substitute established churches. By condensing into a single day all of the traditional steps of church-building, the ritual prevented the church from growing old before completion, ensuring its purity through its newness. Built under threat of pestilence, obydennye khramy had the function of realigning the progression of time, putting an end to the period of disease, and thereby allowing humans to fleetingly triumph over natural forces. Obydennye khramy were enduring as objects of intercession, as governance instruments, and in their subsequent representations in the written word and urban topography. Votive churches were spatial icons, mediating between humans and the cosmos and returning to nature as they decayed. The ritual itself, led by religious and secular authorities, performatively reinforced social hierarchies. Obydennye khramy were immortalised in chronicle narratives and occasionally replaced with stone churches, some of which survive today. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture)
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30 pages, 20943 KiB  
Article
Gothic Drawing and Drawings in the Gothic Tradition in the Iberian Peninsula (13th–18th Centuries)
by Javier Ibáñez Fernández
Arts 2023, 12(1), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010037 - 15 Feb 2023
Viewed by 2266
Abstract
The inventory and cataloguing of the architectural drawings in the Gothic tradition made In the Iberian Peninsula has brought together exceptional sources that were previously scattered, usually little-known and valued, and, in many cases, unpublished. These materials can now be analyzed from multiple [...] Read more.
The inventory and cataloguing of the architectural drawings in the Gothic tradition made In the Iberian Peninsula has brought together exceptional sources that were previously scattered, usually little-known and valued, and, in many cases, unpublished. These materials can now be analyzed from multiple points of view, notably as tools for planning and surveying; as invaluable documents for the study of the enterprises they represent or helped to develop; as sources for the study of master builders; and as data sets for the analysis of the typological models, vaulting solutions, and rib-vault designs used in Gothic architecture—and in architecture of Gothic tradition—built in the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture)
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