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Original filePentagonal Fortress Plan (Exemplum I)
Idealer Grundriss eines Festungsbaus
About This Work
The image is a black-and-white architectural print consisting of two stacked diagrams on a beige page. The top diagram, labeled 'Num. 1', shows a simple nested pentagon outlined with dashed lines. Below it, 'Num. 2' presents a finalized military fortification plan, showing a star-shaped pentagonal perimeter with bastions, internal walls, and hatched areas representing earthworks or ramparts. The composition is clean, technical, and illustrative, emphasizing the mathematical progression of the defensive design.
This print exemplifies the 'trace italienne' or star fort design, which revolutionized 17th-century European military architecture to defend against improved artillery fire. It reflects the era's obsession with applying Euclidean geometry and formal mathematics to the art of war.
Inscriptions(Latin)
Exemplum I. basis figuræ Pentagonalis compositæ, vide Num. I. Figura munimenti ædificati supra fundamentum præcedens sequitur cum suis partibus internis, Num. 2. No. 2 Exemplum