Careers and projects illustrated in manuscripts. The Vintana, military architects (16th-17th centuries)

Abstract

The role of the Vintana, as a dynasty at the service of the battlefields and defensive needs of a centralized and autocratic Empire in the phase of stability as the Austrian one was between the XVI and XVII centuries, is emblematic to understand the defense approach carried out on the border land on behalf of the Habsburgs. Such intervention would like to describe, with the opening up of the great quantity and unpublished archive documents found, the Corsus honorum of such military architect family. Numerous documents have been found at the Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv of Graz and others in several Friulian archives. The Vintana participated in numerous fortifications within the Innerosterreich, drafting reports and proposing renovating, enlarging and modernizing interventions of fortified buildings in a modern way. With the presented documentation, moreover, the diversities are also pointed out and points of contact between two political and administrative realities such as the Austrian and the Venetian one, analyzing the approach supported by both towards the concept of Borders; Such definition, in the Austrian environment will have a much different meaning than the Venetian one, or rather almost inexistent as dividing line or "respect zone".