ABSTRACT
Master Jean Mignot points out to you excellent lords of the workshop council of the Milanese church with respect and pure truth that he had demonstrated in writing elsewhere and among other matters, the defects of said church, he reiterates and affirms that all the buttresses around the church are neither strong nor able to sustain the weight which rests upon them, since they ought in every case to be three times the thickness of one pier in the interior of the church. The Masters reply:
Concerning the first statement, they say that all the buttresses of said church are strong and capable of sustaining their weight and many times more, for many reasons, since one braccio of our marble and saritium [a local building stone], whatever its width, is as strong as two braccia of French stone or of the French church which he gives to the aforesaid masters as an example. Therefore they say that if aforesaid buttresses are one-and-a-half times the size – and they are – of the piers in the interior of the church, that they are strong and correctly conceived, and if they were larger they would darken said church because of their projection, as at the church in Paris, which has buttresses of Master Jean’s type, and since they can be an obstruction there are other reasons.
