Stonecutters' literature and construction practice in early modern Gothic: The tracings for a rib vault at the cathedral of Tui in Galicia

According to the manuscript of Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón, written about 1550, late-Gothic builders used full-size tracings of rib vaults in order to control the placement of the voussoirs of these vaults. No sixteenth-century tracing for a rib vault has been preserved in the Iberian Peninsula, as far as we know; however, a tracing is preserved on the floor of Saint Catherine's chapel in Tui cathedral, resembling closely the rib vaults in the cathedral sacristy. The chapel underwent a thorough renovation between 1707 and 1710; thus, the tracing was, quite probably prepared in connection with the refurbishing of the sacristy vaults in 1709. Building on surveys of the tracing and the vaults, the authors discuss the degree of coincidence between the tracing and the vaults and other issues such as the functional, non-representative character of these tracings and the subtle differences in approach between treatises or manuscripts and actual building practice. © 2012 The Construction History Society.