Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt

Villard de Honnecourt is known only through this portfolio of 33 parchment leaves containing approximately 250 drawings preserved in Paris (Biblioth�que Nationale, MS Fr. 19093). There is no record of him in any known contract, guild register, inscription, payment receipt, tax record, or any other type of evidence from which the names of medieval artisans are learnt. Villard’s fame is due to the uniqueness of his drawings and 19th-century inventiveness in crediting him with having “erected churches throughout the length and breadth of Christendom” without any documentary evidence that he designed or built any church anywhere, or that he was in fact an architect.

The drawing of ‘LEO’ is in the portfolio.