Ropes and Knots: Architectural Emulation in Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Central Europe and the Origins of Architecture

Abstract

Jan Długosz (1410–80) was an author of a number of eminent historical studies, a protagonist of humanism in Poland, and the teacher of the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellonian. He founded a number of churches and houses, which are built of brick and have plain block forms and vaults of the simplest figuration or just flat, wooden ceilings. Their unarticulated external elevations are decorated with diaper-work pattern formed of vitrified brick.Only the recurring decorative details (e.g., doorways in stepped surrounds, window surrounds, and heraldic friezes) are