1 00:00:05,570 --> 00:00:09,290 When I was asked to think about these sort of this sort of project, 2 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:14,240 it got me thinking, how do you how do you represent a building on a piece of paper? 3 00:00:15,530 --> 00:00:20,150 How do you if you wanted to give somebody an idea of what it's like to stand in a building such as this. 4 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:27,260 How would you go about doing that? And as were many of us are well aware, you know, will use plans. 5 00:00:27,500 --> 00:00:32,540 This sort of view from the top and elevations to something like here on the side. 6 00:00:32,540 --> 00:00:35,630 So we have some idea of what these buildings looked like. 7 00:00:36,170 --> 00:00:44,100 But architectural drawing, this development of plans and elevations are technology like a lot of other things. 8 00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:49,309 There was a time before they existed and a time when they were developing, 9 00:00:49,310 --> 00:00:56,040 a time when some great bright spark had the great idea of, I know, I know how to do this. 10 00:00:56,180 --> 00:01:01,070 I'll create is plan whatever he's called it or an elevation. 11 00:01:02,270 --> 00:01:06,620 And I'm interested in the development of that. How do you go how do you think about that? 12 00:01:06,620 --> 00:01:09,800 How does that come into fruition? 13 00:01:11,360 --> 00:01:16,790 So today I'm going to talk a little bit about the author of these images. 14 00:01:17,210 --> 00:01:22,580 These are from the 12th century, a guy called Richard of San Victor. 15 00:01:22,850 --> 00:01:28,430 But before we go on to Richard's drawings, and I promise you that I've I've worked on them for about ten years now. 16 00:01:28,530 --> 00:01:35,030 I'm still interested in them. So they are well worth this. Well, you can see afterwards, I hope you hopefully you'll agree with me. 17 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:41,330 But what if Richard was writing his work or doing his drawings in the 12th century? 18 00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:48,080 What sort of drawings existed before that? And, well, the short answer is not very many. 19 00:01:48,890 --> 00:01:57,790 As you know, the tough part of being a medievalist is quite frequently we have so few documents from which to work, but we do get hints. 20 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:02,360 We have there's a image of a plan and a Babylonian sculpture. 21 00:02:02,690 --> 00:02:13,340 We get pretty detailed descriptions of plans and elevations and drawings and perspective from the first century B.C. and Vitruvius date architectural. 22 00:02:13,790 --> 00:02:20,840 But in the Middle Ages, like a lot of things, this sort of technology, these ideas started to break down. 23 00:02:21,110 --> 00:02:27,560 And just to give you some idea of what these sort of drawings Richard would may have known or something like this. 24 00:02:27,830 --> 00:02:31,050 Now, if you can't make them out, you're not alone. 25 00:02:31,070 --> 00:02:35,570 I spent very many hours looking at drawings like this, trying to figure out what the [INAUDIBLE] is going on. 26 00:02:36,200 --> 00:02:46,340 And I'm not always successful. This is a mosaic in the in France, and it depicts the Holy Sepulchre Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 27 00:02:46,970 --> 00:02:51,590 It's from the fourth century, so it was done not long after the sepulchre was actually built. 28 00:02:52,730 --> 00:03:01,970 If you can figure out that the sepulchre is actually around building a rotunda and that's this bit here and I think. 29 00:03:02,890 --> 00:03:12,760 Nobody's disagreed with me yet. But feel free to. That this is the church that would have been in front of this rotunda, this round building. 30 00:03:13,060 --> 00:03:18,850 But you have to work very hard to figure that out. I think that's a fair comment. 31 00:03:19,690 --> 00:03:22,780 If this is a return to this, this is a round building. 32 00:03:22,930 --> 00:03:26,590 Why are there no openings between the walls? 33 00:03:26,770 --> 00:03:33,640 This makes no sense whatsoever. He this is another type of architectural drawing is another plan. 34 00:03:35,230 --> 00:03:47,260 This shows the celestial Jerusalem, the great temple, the complex that will arrive after the coming of Christ and described in the Book of Revelation. 35 00:03:48,070 --> 00:03:51,580 It is it shows the walls of the celestial Jerusalem. 36 00:03:51,730 --> 00:03:55,240 And these are the 12 gates through which you walk. 37 00:03:55,510 --> 00:04:00,400 This is a bit clearer than this one. But let's face it, there's not that much detail in it. 38 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:05,520 There's more. The artist here is more interested in the declaration of the walls. 39 00:04:05,530 --> 00:04:10,510 It has to look good instead of actually imparting all that much information. 40 00:04:11,580 --> 00:04:18,240 And Richard comes along. Now, Richard was a Scottish author born at the beginning of the 12th century, 41 00:04:19,380 --> 00:04:28,560 and he worked in Paris in the place called Sam Victor, and he decided to write a commentary on the book of Ezekiel. 42 00:04:28,860 --> 00:04:35,490 Now, I'm not sure if you read the book of Ezekiel, but the last part of it is this highly detailed architectural vision. 43 00:04:35,820 --> 00:04:42,370 The prophet Ezekiel is shown around this temple complex by a man with a brazen complexion. 44 00:04:42,540 --> 00:04:50,550 And this man holds a measuring rod, and he measures all the different parts of this temple complex the buildings, 45 00:04:50,700 --> 00:04:55,170 the courtyards, the pavements, the distance between the buildings, you name it. 46 00:04:55,650 --> 00:05:00,240 Now, the problem is, if you read it, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 47 00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:07,229 It's next to impossible to follow. So much so that earlier than than Richard, one author said, well, 48 00:05:07,230 --> 00:05:12,720 we know it makes no sense that we can't read this literally because at one point the door 49 00:05:12,870 --> 00:05:17,160 is just a door of a building is described as larger than the wall to which it's attached. 50 00:05:17,660 --> 00:05:25,860 Well, there's something seriously wrong there. But Richard's being a good Victorian scholar that he is insisted that there had to be a 51 00:05:25,860 --> 00:05:31,350 literal meaning for every part of the Bible and especially the things that you can measure. 52 00:05:31,980 --> 00:05:39,780 So he created this commentary, and in this commentary he includes 14 architectural drawings, plans and elevations. 53 00:05:40,140 --> 00:05:46,020 And this is shows the entire complex. This these are the gate houses. 54 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:50,460 This is the inner atrium here. So this is right at the centre. These are the gate houses. 55 00:05:51,090 --> 00:05:54,960 This is the temple itself. And these are the buildings that surround the temple. 56 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:59,490 So he gives the reader a pretty good idea of how these buildings relate to each other. 57 00:06:00,060 --> 00:06:04,799 This is this is not unique in the Middle Ages, but it is incredibly uncommon. 58 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:12,330 And this is probably one of the clearest examples. Here is my pathetic attempt to try and recreate the centre atrium. 59 00:06:12,330 --> 00:06:18,840 So this part here. These are the gate houses that appear here, here and here. 60 00:06:19,110 --> 00:06:26,370 And this is the temple here. But the sheer fact that you can do this, you can create a three dimensional image, 61 00:06:26,370 --> 00:06:30,480 something that we are much more accustomed to by using Richard's text. 62 00:06:30,750 --> 00:06:36,090 And his image is a huge development in the genre. 63 00:06:37,930 --> 00:06:46,150 He's not finished. He the vast majority of these 14 architectural plans and elevations are of these gate houses. 64 00:06:46,750 --> 00:06:51,630 It's not altogether clear why he includes so many drawings of the gate houses. 65 00:06:51,640 --> 00:06:57,760 They're not the most important building in the entire complex, but they are do repeat. 66 00:06:57,770 --> 00:07:02,770 So when you want to go through each of the courtyards, you had to go through a gatehouse like this. 67 00:07:03,460 --> 00:07:08,680 So what Richard does, he wants to give you the clearest idea possible of what these buildings look like. 68 00:07:09,100 --> 00:07:15,130 So he starts with this. He just gives you an overall general impression of what it would have looked like. 69 00:07:15,460 --> 00:07:21,130 So it's a rectangular building with a great big hole running through the middle of it. 70 00:07:21,460 --> 00:07:26,140 So you read that, you look at it and you have some ideas, okay, I know what I'm dealing with here. 71 00:07:26,620 --> 00:07:31,840 Then he gives you even more information. This shows you one side here. 72 00:07:32,260 --> 00:07:38,260 He wants to give you the entire interior composition of the walls and how they're laid out. 73 00:07:38,530 --> 00:07:42,460 This is where the priests would have made sacrifices along here. 74 00:07:42,790 --> 00:07:48,610 And this particular manuscript, he gives you the measurements for all the different parts as well. 75 00:07:48,820 --> 00:07:52,960 That's, again, incredibly rare and almost unique. 76 00:07:53,200 --> 00:07:56,230 This tells us that the threshold here is six cubits. 77 00:07:56,470 --> 00:08:02,350 So that's a Cuban cubit is about a forearms and length, and the whole width of it is eight cubits. 78 00:08:03,010 --> 00:08:06,250 He's not finished. He wants to give you even more information. 79 00:08:06,490 --> 00:08:16,300 And so he provides this a great big plan of the entire gatehouse with all of these different measurements included again. 80 00:08:16,810 --> 00:08:25,730 So. I suppose the most one of the most important developments here is the fact that he gives multiple drawings of the same building. 81 00:08:25,820 --> 00:08:29,510 That doesn't happen that that definitely doesn't happen before this. 82 00:08:29,750 --> 00:08:36,140 We don't have, I think, any extant examples. So we have a good idea of what's happening and it's relatively easy to follow. 83 00:08:36,350 --> 00:08:40,160 I hope I hope I hope you think as well. But he's not finished. 84 00:08:40,700 --> 00:08:45,020 He gives you elevations for this same gatehouse. 85 00:08:45,440 --> 00:08:53,360 And for the first time we see as the Prophet Ezekiel describes, the gatehouse is on the side of a mountain. 86 00:08:53,900 --> 00:09:02,060 And we can see that he's able to include these steps to in order to incorporate this side of the mountain. 87 00:09:02,210 --> 00:09:05,900 And these drawings are incredible in this particular manuscript. 88 00:09:06,620 --> 00:09:10,430 In the Bodleian you open, it's all on one opening. 89 00:09:10,550 --> 00:09:16,340 And so you get in one entire glance exactly what this building would have looked like. 90 00:09:16,520 --> 00:09:20,120 You can print out these. I've tried it. You can print out copies of these things, 91 00:09:20,120 --> 00:09:27,080 put them on woods or some sort of block that's similar size and just sort of print them and put them on the side. 92 00:09:27,140 --> 00:09:33,470 And it's extraordinary. Even today, you get such a clear idea of Richard Richard's vision for this. 93 00:09:34,580 --> 00:09:45,040 I suppose I just want to go over one of the sort of important, more important developments that Richard gives for these drawings in his text. 94 00:09:45,260 --> 00:09:51,440 He's how he describes the gatehouse is that he describes all the interior of it. 95 00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:53,330 He doesn't describe the exterior all that much. 96 00:09:53,510 --> 00:10:01,940 He's more interested in what the different floors do and what sizes they are and how the roofs that relate to the pavements and things like that. 97 00:10:02,600 --> 00:10:10,730 So in order for the reader to get as much as possible out of these drawings, he has to include information about the interior. 98 00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:16,340 And he struggles a little bit with this because if we think of this as a technology, 99 00:10:16,610 --> 00:10:25,879 this is the sort of rubbish a Nokia phone from the late nineties that they're trying to figure out how it works, 100 00:10:25,880 --> 00:10:33,270 what it can be used for and what's happening. Because in order to show the interior, he just includes a little bit of text. 101 00:10:33,270 --> 00:10:36,830 So that's a this this is that bit here, a little bit of text. 102 00:10:37,100 --> 00:10:45,530 And that text shows you how far the interior wall goes in its it's clear if you know to read it if you look closely. 103 00:10:45,680 --> 00:10:50,329 But at one glance it's not all that clear what the interior looks like. 104 00:10:50,330 --> 00:10:55,910 Just from the text alone, you have to look very, very carefully. 105 00:10:57,400 --> 00:11:04,299 But he figures that out in the next drawing, we have something a little bit better, 106 00:11:04,300 --> 00:11:08,800 a little bit of development in this technology that we can think of as architectural drawing. 107 00:11:09,290 --> 00:11:21,340 As we look down here. We have the arches showing through and the text tells us that that's these parts here, these individual long rooms. 108 00:11:21,640 --> 00:11:26,890 So that tells us that we can see the interior of this building. 109 00:11:27,610 --> 00:11:31,930 So this is, in fact, a what we call a sectional elevation. 110 00:11:32,140 --> 00:11:39,190 It's as if Richard has sliced off the front of the building just enough so that we can see inside it. 111 00:11:39,490 --> 00:11:42,670 And this absolutely does not happen before this. 112 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:48,640 It's a true an incredible innovation for the development of architectural drawing, 113 00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:53,560 but also the way in which we can show as much information as possible. 114 00:11:53,740 --> 00:12:02,830 If the question at the beginning is, how do we represent a three dimensional structure, a monumental three dimensional structure, like a building? 115 00:12:03,100 --> 00:12:09,220 And to give the reader, the viewer, as much information as possible, well, we can do something like this. 116 00:12:09,700 --> 00:12:17,950 We can just chop off in our imagination or here on the page itself at the front of the building, 117 00:12:18,280 --> 00:12:21,800 and to allow them to see inside, to see that interior. 118 00:12:21,970 --> 00:12:25,900 And so we can relate this drawing to this drawing. 119 00:12:26,410 --> 00:12:33,850 Richard forces the reader to look at his drawings and to think very carefully about what's going on in them. 120 00:12:34,270 --> 00:12:38,259 And being a medievalist, one of the most frustrating things in the world, 121 00:12:38,260 --> 00:12:43,390 because they're always concerned about very different things than we're concerned about, Richard says. 122 00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:45,910 Doesn't say a lot of things I would love him to say. 123 00:12:46,180 --> 00:12:54,940 But one of the things he does say is why he includes these drawings and he says that I include these drawings. 124 00:12:54,940 --> 00:13:06,670 So that and I quote everybody, no matter how simple they might be, I can understand his particular recreation of Ezekiel's temple. 125 00:13:07,760 --> 00:13:20,110 So if we think about that, what Richard is in fact doing is he's using these as as teaching tools so that people who Latin may not be fantastic. 126 00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:26,510 Maybe some of your Latin is very good. Mine is middling sometimes. 127 00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:32,809 But even 800 years after Richard has created these drawings, his sheer innovation, 128 00:13:32,810 --> 00:13:41,090 sheer fact of him thinking very deeply about how you represent a three dimensional object still works. 129 00:13:41,180 --> 00:13:51,140 We're still able to grasp and still able to understand his particular vision and his particular interpretation of Ezekiel's drawing. 130 00:13:51,650 --> 00:13:52,780 And I think that's incredible. 131 00:13:52,790 --> 00:14:06,170 And I think that's a particular, Leigh, important development in this way of thinking 3D to to copy the that that the creators of this exhibition.