Esplorazione visuale del dibattito intorno al secondo fianco

Between the end of the sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, the ‘second flank’ has been an interesting topic within the cultural debate around military architecture, since its implementation in the curtain-ramparts system would have allowed a greater volume of fire along the faces of the bastions. The contribution proposes an analysis of the graphic apparatuses of some treatises, investigating the methods used to represent, analyse, and discuss the theme of the second flank. Among all its estimators, there is also Giuseppe Ignazio Bertola. In his Dizionario e repertorio… he noted the ideas of some of the previous authors. Starting from Bertola’s Dizionario, available in the critical edition by Amelio Fara, the paper proposes the analysis of the sources cited, expanding the search to other treatises. Through a critical interpretation of the relationships between textual descriptions and various representations, a first visual exploration of the debate around the second flank is carried out, opening to the comparison with the visual culture of the time. Different relationships emerge between texts and images, used by each author to strengthen the communication of his idea. In this sense, images become graphic proof of the goodness of the system, or illustrations in support of a broader discussion. The paper focus also on the ambiguity of the term, as used over the centuries XVI and XIX, also from the graphic point of view.