Writings on Villard de Honnecourt, 2010-Present
2010.1
HOLCOMB, MELANIE. Review of Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (F.XII), H-France Review, vol. 10 no. 29 (2010), pp. 144-147.
Praises (p. 144) Barnes's facsimile edition as being "tremendously useful" and (p. 145) that "the color plates [of cover and folios] are a revelation." Holcomb lauds several aspects of Barnes's effort as thorough and well organized, she but chides the author as being too conservative in his approach to Villard and for professorial finger-wagging in his insistance that the Villard assemblage be called a "portfolio" and (p. 146) his denouncing those who claim that Villard was an architect.
Holcomb's full review can be accessed at: http://h-france.net/vol10reviews/vol10reviews.html.
2010.2
DAVIS, MICHAEL T. Review of Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (F.XII), The Medieval Review, vol. 10.05.14, pp. numbers unknown.
Not so much a review of Barnes’s publication as an essay on Davis’s feelings about Villard as an artist. Davis says nothing of the organization of Barnes’s book, nothing of its arguments, nothing of its new discoveries, for example, that there were at least eight hands who composed the various inscriptions on the leaves. He likewise says nothing about the glossary or the iconograpic index of subjects. The black and white text illustrations or the black and white plates are not mentioned, either for their quality or their appropriateness. Of the color plates he writes that Barnes’s “meticulous descriptions of the portfolio’s pages refocuses appreciative attention on his [=Villard’s] ‘extraordinary skills’ as a draftsman." Davis notes that Barnes “retires Villard de Honnecourt as a professional builder and through a disciplined pruning of the thickets of speculation to insist that, at present, Villard is unknowable.”