Steenhouwersmerken opnieuw beschouwd: Steenhouwers en fabrieksrekeningen van de Dom in Utrecht

Abstract

Stonemasons’ marks on those sections of the Dom Church in Utrecht built after circa 1450 belong to the type of late medieval marks widely used in regions within the Holy Roman Empire. If the assumption is correct that each distinct mark of this type appearing on the same building site is unique to an individual stonemason, there must accordingly be a direct relationship between the marks on the Dom and the stonemasons employed by the masons’ lodge, a record of whose wages are to be found in the surviving construction accounts from 1460 onwards. To demonstrate the existence of such a link, a new inventory of stonemasons’ marks and a new construction chronology were drawn up and used to determine the period during which each mark appears. The resulting datings were compared with the period when the stonemasons were employed in the lodge. In the case of the latest parts of the transept, the time span in which the 23 most frequently observed marks appear proved to correspond with the employment period of the 23 masons who worked for at least nine months in the Dom Church masons’ lodge. In addition, no single mark was in use for so long that it could not be linked to an individual mason, and there was a mason to match each mark. This makes a direct link between marks and masons highly probable. Thanks to this discovery, various aspects of stonemasons’ marks – as far as the late medieval situation in Utrecht is concerned, at any rate – can now be discussed with greater authority than was previously the case. Thus it is now possible to state that the marks were indeed personal and that they represent individual stonemasons employed in the lodge. Furthermore, it transpires that the stonemasons were involved in laying as well as working the stones. The masters of works do not appear to have been represented by a mark used over an extended period. Mirror-image marks turn out to represent the same stonemason and minor variations do not by and large indicate different stonemasons. The distinction between marked and unmarked stones turns out to have nothing to do with a double payment system. Since the identity of some (groups of) stonemasons can be fairly confidently determined, some sections of Utrecht’s Dom Church can be more accurately dated. If it is known which stonemason marked a particular stone, it is also possible to determine the time span within which the stone must have been worked. This gives rise to earliest and latest dates which can then be used to date the section of the building. Several paragraphs cover proposals for a new dating for the oldest vault in the chapter house, for (the construction of) the west transept pillars, and for the two surviving nave-aisle pillars. Finally, similar stonemasons’ marks in Utrecht’s Dom Church and that of Xanten were compared. Sometimes the chronological distance between the appearance of the marks on the two buildings is so great that the involvement of the same stonemason can be ruled out. In all remaining instances, the absence of matching names in the administration of the respective masons’ lodges for the relevant periods makes it reasonable to assume that different stonemasons were involved. Caution is thus advisable when comparing buildings on the basis of identical stonemasons’ marks.