An Unnoticed Plan of St. Stephen’s in the Early Eighteenth Century and Its Implications for the Medieval Building History (original) (raw)

2022, Barbara Schedl and Franz Zehetner (eds), St. Stephan in Wien. Die “Herzogswerkstatt"

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An Unnoticed Plan of St. Stephen's in the Early Eighteenth Century and Its Implications for the Medieval Building History discusses a significant yet overlooked ground plan of St. Stephen's Cathedral, discovered in a historical account by Anton Ferdinand von Geusau. The paper explores the plan's details and its implications for understanding the architectural evolution of the cathedral, offering insight into its construction history and the role of civic authorities in preserving historical records.

A Geometrical Investigation of the Cistercian Church at Altenberg

The east end of Cologne Cathedral was built atop a perfectly circular semi-circular podium whose geometrical center corresponds to that of the apse. This semi-circle, and the lines dividing it into 30-degree slices, are shown in red in . Within each half of the semi-circle, a red quare can be inscribed; it is convenient to call the length of each square 1.000 unit, so that the radius of the semi-circle is √2, or 1.414. This relationship between squares and their circumscribing circles is closely associated with the nesting of rotated squares known as quadrature, which is well known the literature on Gothic architecture. It is important to emphasize, though, that Gothic builders exploited the relationship between circles and other polygons, including octagons, hexagons, and, in cases like the Cologne choir, twelve-sided dodecagons. The fundamental principle was the same in every case. Each time one steps inward, the radius in question shrinks by a factor corresponding to the cosine of the angle in the polygon. In the case of a square, for example, the relevant ratio is cosine (45°) = .707 = 1/ 1.414. In the case of a dodecagon, the ratio is cosine (15°) = .966. If one steps inward by two such steps, then the radius shrinks by a factor of (.966) 2 =.933. In the Cologne choir, this radius corresponds to the • This essay is adapted and excerpted from the author's contributions to Sabine Lepsky and Norbert Nußbaum, Gotische Konstruktion und Baupraxis an der Zisterzienserkirche Altenberg, Bd. 2: Quer-und Langhaus (Bergisch-Gladbach, 2012), pp. 74-88.

The Baptistery of Pisa and the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre: A Reconsideration

in: Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca Kuehnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 95-105 , 2015

The Baptistery of Pisa has long been known to be one of the most accurate medieval copies of the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Despite the many similarities, there are, naturally, some divergences in Pisa from the plan and section of Jerusalem as it was in the 12th century. These have been noted and seen as following the general tendency in the Middle Ages for selective copying, as outlined by Richard Krautheimer. Yet a close reading of the Baptistery's architecture, both in plan and in section, hints that the divergences are deliberate and occur only when they add symbolic value. They seem even more conspicuous in light of some previously unmarked similarities of architectural elements that coincide exactly with those in Jerusalem, but whose placing is deliberately changed in Pisa. The changed location of some elements demonstrates a reflection on their significance and symbolism. This paper analyzes the architectural elements, direct quotes and deviations, in this Pisan interpretation of the Holy Sepulchre and shows its innovation. The analysis leads to a re-assessment of the relationship between the two buildings and points to the Baptistery as a building that does not conform to the known characteristics of medieval architectural translation, but ushers in an innovative approach to the idea of copy and representation.

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Review of Old St. Peter’s, Rome, ed. R. McKitterick, J. Osborne, C. Richardson and J. Story, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, for Speculum, 90, 2015, 279-81