"Balloardi, cortine e speroni". L'ingegnere militare alla corte Sabauda attraverso i trattati di Carlo di Castellamonte e di Antonio Maurizio Valperga (XVII secolo). / "Bulkwarks, curtains and spurs". Military engineers at the Savoy court through the treatises by Carlo di Castellamonte and Antonio Maurizio Valperga (17th century)"

This contribution aims to investigate the role of the engineer in 17th-century Turin, from the Peace of Cherasco (1631), a strategic political moment for the Savoy duchy, to the years around the end of the Thirty Years' War, when new technical figures were developing in the most important states of the time. Particular attention was given to a comparative analysis of significant contemporary manuscripts and printed books on the ars militaris, in which Piedmontese engineers were key players. The subject has been widely dealt with in historiography, but today we believe it is necessary to go into it in greater depth, through the works of Piedmontese military engineers, first of all Carlo di Castellamonte and Antonio Maurizio Valperga. The focus was on their theoretical work, from the preliminary instructions for military exercise, the instructions for the construction of the fortification site, the design of the entrenchment of a site to the calculation of measurements for a curtain wall. Their work was closely linked to the rigorous representation of the territory and the critical points of the fortifications, using disciplines such as geometry and trigonometry, which were also essential for the training of the new soldiers.