Research from a professor at the University of Aberdeen has advanced evidence that the art and practice of architectural drawing may have been invented by a 12th-century Scottish clergyman working in Paris around the time of the construction of Notre-Dame Cathedral and other important Gothic structures. 

Dr. Karl Kinsella is a lecturer in Medieval Art History at the institution. His new book, God’s Own Language: Architectural Drawing in the Twelfth Century, presents the idea that a previously unknown monk named Richard the Scot was likely the first person to use the term ‘plan’ for drawings, sections, and elevations he apparently made in order to demonstrate the vantage point of the prophet Ezekiel's visions using then-modern concepts of geometry.

Kinsella says: “This is the earliest evidence we have of a complete visual description of a building including several plans, elevations and sections, but they appear in this strange theological work instead of coming out of building sites.”

“It seems likely that Richard gets the idea not from builders – as we don’t have architects at this point – but from talking to Jewish scholars around him, who used a similar technique. [the Saint Victor Abbey] was known as a place where Jewish learning was accepted. For Richard, talking to a Jewish scholar was like ‘picking up the phone’ to the Old Testament. Richard took a good idea and developed it into something that could all recognize today, architectural drawings,” he added.

According to Kinsella, about two dozen manuscripts containing at least some of the drawings, which were executed with the help of a mentee named Hugh, exist in different parts of Europe. 

Though most conceptions of architectural drawings credit Ancient Egyptian builders and later Vitruvius and his contemporaries with the development of drawing and other textual communications techniques that propelled architecture into the Renaissance, the book offers a new perspective that architectural scholars of the important Middle Ages period can more accurately assemble into their studies.

This will, of course, have bearings on education, architectural theory, and the work of heritage experts and conservators. Kinsella hopes the book will author a new chapter in the way we value the period as a whole.

“Collections of art and architectural theoretical texts frequently leave out the Middle Ages, a period of time that arguably defined much of the urban space throughout Europe, so to see Richard as our earliest documented architect significantly adds to our understanding,” he said finally.

God's Own Language: Architectural Drawing in the Twelfth Century is published by MIT Press.