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Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Hover to magnify, click for fullscreen
Original fileIdealer Grundriss eines Festungsbaus
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.
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
Translation
Example I. Basis of the composite pentagonal figure, see Num. 1. The figure of the fortified building constructed upon the preceding foundation follows with its internal parts, Num. 2.
Robert Fludd
The style and context of the image align with the architectural and geometric investigations found in Fludd's 'Utriusque Cosmi Maioris'.
Object
engraving
laid paper
Baroque
German
architectural
Digital Source
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
566 × 820 px
Linked Data
AI AI-cataloged fields generated by gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview on April 20, 2026. Getty identifiers are AI-inferred and may require verification.