Posted on 06/24/2015 6:21:06 AM PDT by marshmallow
A tech-savvy art historian uses lasers to understand how medieval builders constructed their architectural masterpieces.
Thirteen million people visit the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris every year, entering through massive wooden doors at the base of towers as solidly planted as mountains. They stand in front of walls filigreed with stained glass and gaze at a ceiling supported by delicate ribs of stone.
If its beauty and magnificence is instantly apparent, so much about Notre Dame is not. To begin with, we don't know who built this cathedral—or how.
The bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, commissioned the massive church complex around 1160. Yet the names of those who first constructed this masterpiece are lost to history. They left no records—only centuries of speculation—behind.
"So much ink has been spilled over that building," says art historian Andrew Tallon. "So much of it is completely wrong."
A former composer, would-be monk, and self-described gearhead—or, as he puts it, "tacklehead"—Tallon intends to make that history right. With the help of 21st-century laser scanners, he is teasing out clues hidden in the ancient stones of Notre Dame and other medieval structures—and revolutionizing our understanding of how these spectacular buildings were made.
One Billion Points of Data
Tallon, 46, wasn't the first to realize that laser scanners could be used to deconstruct Gothic architecture. But he was the first to use the scans to get inside medieval builders' heads.
"Every building moves," he says. "It heaves itself out of shape when foundations move, when the sun heats up on one side." How the building moves reveals its original design and the choices that the master builder had to make when construction didn't go as planned. Tracking this thought process requires precise measurements.
For a long time, the tools used to measure medieval buildings were nearly....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Same stuff....different day...
If there is ever a fitting slogan for this Episcopal pile of rocks...it’s that it is “out of plumb”
But ... what does any of this have to do with the Confederate flag? Or racism?
*snort*
Thank you for the giggle.
Thank you. I remember from my art history course 50 years ago, Fr. Esser stating that Notre Dames’ flying buttresses were part of the original plan.
This is an excellent article reminding us WHY the magnificent cathedrals of the middle ages took so long to build and all we see is not necessarily what we are actually seeing.
Actually, they weren’t. The flying buttresses were added by the second or third Chief Architect after he discovered that the very thin outer walls had begun to bulge under their own weight.
Thanks for the ping. Very interesting.
The technique he employs of simultaneously laser scanning the entire structure and taking a spherical photo from the same spot so he can assign each laser scanned point a color is amazing, the “photographs” he created from them (link is in the article) are stunning. The only way you’ll ever get to experience what it is to stand at the top of one of these masterpieces.
The muslim terrorists would blow it up if they could.
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