Prospettiva Soldatesca: An Empirical Approach to the Representation of Military Architecture in the Early Modern Period

• Published in: Nexus network journal 2014-12, Vol.16 (3), p.543-567
• Main Authors: Alonso-Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel, Calvo-López, José
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 16th century; 20th century; Architecture; Armed forces; Artillery; Buildings; Early modern period; History; History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Middle Ages; Military; National libraries; Origins; Popular Science; Projection; Projectors; Representations; Studies
• ISSN: 1590-5896; 1522-4600
• DOI: 10.1007/s00004-014-0216-6

The paper deals with the history of military perspective, that is, cavalier perspective with a horizontal projection plane. After surveying briefly its remote origins in ancient and mediaeval transoblique or ‘Egyptian’ perspective, the authors explain how military perspective arose to fulfill the needs of military architecture representation, in particular the depiction of the new bastion systems that were introduced in the late fifteen and sixteenth centuries as an answer to the appearance of gunpowder and artillery. Next, the paper follows its gradual expansion into broader fields as a general technical drawing procedure, while remarking a puzzling fact: until the 19th, this technique was not conceived as a projection, in contrast to orthographic drawing and linear perspective. Nevertheless, its awkard ‘legalisation’ in the late nineteenth century paved the way for its adoption as the most significant graphic device of the architecture of the twentieth century.