Review: Leonardo Turriano: Ingeniero del rey by Alicia Cámara, Rafael Moreira, Marino Viganò

Abstract

Leonardo Turriano (1559–1629) was a military engineer. Born in Cremona, in Spanish Lombardy, his career largely developed in Spain and Portugal, although he also served briefly at the court of Rudolf II in Prague whence, in 1582, he was called to Iberia by Phillip II to work on fortifications. Only two years after the dynastic union of the crowns of Madrid and Lisbon under the Spanish Habsburgs, Turriano arrived at the seat of a world empire where the sun never set and, by 1598, he was named the chief engineer of the kingdom of Portugal. At the Spanish court, he entered into the competitive circuit of the other military engineering advisers and faced direct rivalry from his compatriot, Tiburcio Spannochi.This book, published by the Fundación Juanelo Turriano, makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding of Leonardo Turriano's undervalued and misunderstood character. In nearly three hundred beautifully illustrated pages, it offers a parallel discovery of Turriano's writing and his cartographic or iconographic work, considered alongside that of his professional colleagues. Indeed, visual presentation is one of the main features of this book, including five luxuriously reproduced drawings depicting Turriano's fortification projects for Oran and Mazalquivir (today, neighboring cities in Algeria), that unfold at a large scale. The book is divided into three parts, each with a different objective, written by Alicia Cámara, Rafael Moreira, and Marino Viganò—Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian scholars.Cámara's