Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld et les ingénieurs et architectes militaires [2004] (original) (raw)

As governor of the province of Luxembourg, count Peter Ernst von Mansfeld (1517-1604) was for nearly sixty years responsible for overseeing all fortification works in this strategically important border province of the Habsburg Low Countries and thus entertained close contacts with many engineers and military architects, including Donato de Bono, Francesco Paciotto, Jacques van Noyen and Pierre Lepoivre. Besides discussing Mansfeld’s role and his interactions with these engineers in the Luxembourg border fortresses (Thionville, Montmédy, Damvillers, Yvois, Luxembourg, Arlon) and elsewhere in the country, this article also identifies and publishes for the first time several previously unknown drawings, including a plan of the castle of Aspremont from c.1551 (fig. 1), the earliest known fortification plans, datable to the early 1550s, of Luxembourg (fig. 2) and Thionville (fig. 3), a plan of Yvois by the Venetian engineer Giovan Tommaso Scala (fig. 4), and a remarkable design for Thionville which is here attributed to Jacques van Noyen c.1561-62 (fig. 8). . A thoroughly revised and updated version of this article, with other illustrations, appeared in the 2007 exhibition catalogue “Un prince de la Renaissance. Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517-1604)”, pp. 97-112.