For whom the bell tolls – Codex Manesse – The Church.

Finally I managed to steal some time for the hobby and here is the effect. The church is my first attempt at creating Codex Manesse architecture, or any CM 3D piece at all. I was not sure if the feel of a medieval manuscript could be maintained in a 3d model, especially that in original manuscripts architecture is always secondary to characters (or scene in general) and either greatly undersized or just symbolic. Especially choosing the right size comparing to Codex Manesse minis was quite tricky. Too small ant the model is getting useless as a potential gaming piece, to big and it’s loosing the manuscript feel dominating the miniatures to much.  The end result of this little experiment you can see below

          

The model consists of 3 separate pieces that can be variously arranged: a Belltower, a Nave and a Choir with a polygonal apse. The layout above would be most common but the belltower in example could be aligned to the side of the Nave, two  bell towers could flank the Nave, or it could be detached as a free standing campanila. The Nave itself works also on its own making a nice townhouse or a small Pfalz. As medieval architecture was generally additive in it’s nature, you can print multiple pieces and arrange them in many possible ways.

The church is not an exact extract of Codex Manesse but rather a collage piece. The belltower is derived from the chart of Meisster Johannes Hadlob (or Hadlaub) the rest is a collection of elements from random other charts. Courious thing about depictions of architecture in Codex Manesse is that it is mostly green, with yellow details, and the next most common colour in the palette being pink (in diffrent variants) nothing even remotely trying to remind real construction materials (e.g. in a bit older Maciejowski Bible colours are much better matched).  Not that it actually matters, especially for a medieval illuminator, such random use of colour is actually part of the appeal of CM (and many other high medieval) illustrations, still I found this feature funny… I mean… can You imagine the real Notre Damme de Paris or Köln Cathedral or Tower of London green? 🙂

Anyway if You would like to add a church to your Codex Manesse minis you can get it below. Just right click and save target as… and if You would like to see more of CM architecture feel free to leave a note in the comments.