Flourished 1200-1250
Mason And Architect

Early Life and Career. Biographies of Villard de Honnecourt are filled with conjectures, some more romantic and appealing than others. Everyone agrees that he was born in Picardy in northern France near the beginning of the thirteenth century. The only source of information about him from near that time is Villard's sketchbook, which comprises approximately sixty-six pages and two hundred and fifty drawings. According to this source, he had "been in many lands" and "had been sent to the land of Hungary" where he "remained many days." Such a trip would have taken several months and was remarkable for a medieval European of his class. Beyond this basic information, most of the facts of his biography are in dispute. His name does not appear in any surviving contracts, guild registers, payment receipts, or inscriptions—the most common sources of...