I.1.2
THE FIRST MONOGRAPHIC STUDIES
It took another 140 years for the Plan to become the
subject of a separate study. The first monographic treatment
of the Plan was published in 1844 by Ferdinand
Keller, the founder of the Antiquarische Gesellschaft of
Zurich.[8]
It included as a novelty an attempt to interpret
the construction of the buildings shown on the Plan. Keller
intended to publish a full scale lithographic facsimile edition
of the Plan, but the stone on which the design was drawn
broke apart during the first printing and was subsequently
replaced by a smaller stone on which the outlines of the
Plan were reduced to four-fifths the original size. The
explanatory legends were superimposed in their original
dimensions upon this reduced image, and in this discordant
form the Plan was published, together with a detailed
description of its drawings and legends.
Although by no means free of errors and omissions—
the most serious of which is the omission of the dedicatory
letter—Keller's "facsimile" nevertheless was an excellent
specimen of lithographic reproduction and formed the
basis for all future research. In the English-speaking world
the Plan became known through an enlarged and annotated
translation of Keller's text by Robert Willis, published in
the 1848 volume of the Archaeological Journal;[9]
in France,
through Albert Lenoir's treatment of the subject in his
Architecture monastique of 1852,[10]
and through a translation
of Willis into French by M. A. Campion,[11]
which appeared
in the Bulletin monumental of 1868. The latter formed the
basis of Leclercq's widely read description of the Plan of
St. Gall in Cabrol-Leclercq's Dictionnaire d'archéologie
chrétienne et de liturgie[12]
which added nothing original to
the study of the Plan.
