1227


Wilars de Honecort
architect.
Wilars, thought to have belonged to Honnecourt, a village near Cambrai (Nord, France), is known by an album of sketches preserved in the collection of manuscripts taken from the Abbey of S. Germain des Prés, which are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. In the fifteenth century the volume contained forty-one leaves of vellum. There are now but thirty-three. The drawings are made with lead or silver point, sometimes inked in. The book contains numerous figures probably taken from sculpture or glass, sketches of architectural details, such as the plans of the towers of Laon, the rose window at Chartes, the rose window at Lausanne, and many mechanical devices. From internal evidence contained in this book, it is supposed that he was one of the leaders in the development of Gothic architecture in the thirteenth century, and that he built between 1227 and 1251, the choir of the cathedral of Cambrai, which was destroyed during the French Revolution. About 1244 he visited Hungary. The apse of the church at Meaux and the church at Vaucelles, also some buildings in Hungary which show French influence, have been attributed to him by different writers.

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