The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

In figure 6, I have reproduced a detail of a well-known
architectural drawing of the thirteenth century which
renders the ground floor of the southern tower of Cologne
Cathedral.[106] This design, which is a typical example of its
kind, shows how in laying out his plan a medieval architect
avails himself of an elaborate framework of auxiliary construction
lines and reference points which he presses into
the parchment with a fine stylus or silverpoint before
committing his drawing to ink. This constructional reference
work guides his eye as the drawing is being executed
and remains visible as an underdrawing, in the form of
thin grooves and fine prickings,[107] in those portions of the
design which are not covered by ink in the final stage of the
work.[108]

In contrast to this, on the entire Plan of St. Gall there is
not a single line of this type to be found.[109] The absence of
such auxiliary construction work is most conspicuous in

[ILLUSTRATION]

6. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING: DETAIL, FACSIMILE
13th century

VIENNA, AKADEMIE DER BILDENDEN KÜNSTE, KUPFERSTICHKABINET

Plan of buttressed pier in the southwest tower of Cologne Cathedral.
The drawing of which this detail is a part measures 700 × 610 mm.
See comments for figure 9.

[ILLUSTRATION]

7. PLAN OF ST. GALL

Alignment of Outer School, House for Distinguished Guests, and
Kitchen, Bake, and Brew House for Distinguished Guests. The
superimposed black lines show which course the outer walls of buildings
would have taken had they been drawn with instruments. The largest
departure from parallelism at the end of lines running askew because of
inaccuracies incurred in tracing are 4 mm at the bottom of fig. 7 and
6 mm at the top of fig. 8.

areas where buildings of equal width are grouped in single
and double rows, or in the interior of buildings whose
layout is so complex that it could not have been drawn
without a linear frame of reference. This can be illustrated
by some typical examples.

[106]

Reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Siegfried Freiberg
of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. For a reproduction of
the entire drawing (No. 16.873 of the Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie
der Bildenden Künste) see Hans Tietze, 1931, 169. Misinterpreted by
Tietze in several respects, the plan was thoroughly rediscussed and reevaluated
by Hans Kauffmann, 1948, 80-88.

[107]

These fine prickings are not so easily detected on photographs as on
the original. Two typical examples, not discernible in the reproductions
shown in figure 6, are indicated by arrows.

[108]

For further details see Horn, in Studien, 1962, 82.

[109]

In an earlier stage of my studies (Horn, ibid., 82-83) I expressed the
thought that a shaded ridge that runs in the axis of the southern nave
arcade (most clearly visible in interstice of the first two columns, counting
from west, and in its prolongation of their axis through the western
paradise) might have served as a base line to fall back on in case the two
skins should shift in the course of tracing; but the fact that this line
(not drawn with the aid of a stylus, but more likely the result of a
deliberate folding and restretching of sheet 2 before it was attached to
sheet 1; cf. below, 35ff) coincides with the deflected rather than the
original axis of the Church discredits this view.

University of Virginia Library

ABSENCE OF UNDERDRAWING

6. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING: DETAIL, FACSIMILE 13th century

7. PLAN OF ST. GALL

6. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING: DETAIL, FACSIMILE
13th century