This research deals with the analysis of Giovanni Battista Antonelli’s activities in Spain and his personal view about fortified architecture. The military engineer, who was born and educated in Italy, moved to serve the Spanish crown after 1559, becoming one of the architects of the King Philip II in charge of the defence of the kingdom. The analysis of his work starts from the reading of his treatise on modern fortifications, never published and written between 1560 and 1561, during his very first period spent in the new country. The manuscript focuses on the 16th century military architecture, composed by pentagonal bastions calibrated on the cannons’ fire and designed by the use of drawing and geometry. Starting from the theory explained in the “Epitomi”, the study was completed by analysing the projects by Antonelli for the territorial defence and on a smaller scale for the protection of the city. The comparison of the original documentation - preserved in some of the most important Spanish national archives - with the iconographic sources, has been a fundamental mean of gathering data and details about the defensive buildings. The last part of the work deals with a case study, the only built project ever, that represents his worst experience and total failure as a military engineer, because of his too strict adoption of the modern fortification model of a bastioned quadrilateral for a mountainous site, contradicting all the reflections of his treatise.
Modelli compositivi per la difesa “alla moderna”. L’esperienza di Giovanni Battista Antonelli.
Bertacchi, Silvia
2013
Abstract
This research deals with the analysis of Giovanni Battista Antonelli’s activities in Spain and his personal view about fortified architecture. The military engineer, who was born and educated in Italy, moved to serve the Spanish crown after 1559, becoming one of the architects of the King Philip II in charge of the defence of the kingdom. The analysis of his work starts from the reading of his treatise on modern fortifications, never published and written between 1560 and 1561, during his very first period spent in the new country. The manuscript focuses on the 16th century military architecture, composed by pentagonal bastions calibrated on the cannons’ fire and designed by the use of drawing and geometry. Starting from the theory explained in the “Epitomi”, the study was completed by analysing the projects by Antonelli for the territorial defence and on a smaller scale for the protection of the city. The comparison of the original documentation - preserved in some of the most important Spanish national archives - with the iconographic sources, has been a fundamental mean of gathering data and details about the defensive buildings. The last part of the work deals with a case study, the only built project ever, that represents his worst experience and total failure as a military engineer, because of his too strict adoption of the modern fortification model of a bastioned quadrilateral for a mountainous site, contradicting all the reflections of his treatise.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
