Girolamo Cattaneo
Italian architect and mathematician

Girolamo Cattaneo (active 1540–1584) was an Italian military writer who in his lifetime was regarded as one of the foremost masters of military architecture.
Life
Cattaneo was born in Novara, northern Italy, but his background is otherwise unknown. It is posited that he must have had considerable training in mathematics and geometry, given his knowledge of hydraulics, surveying, and ballistics. He was a military architect and worked predominantly in Mantua and Brescia.
He worked for Vespasiano I Gonzaga, duke of Sabbioneta, whom he advised on the construction of a new fortification, in particular the two city gates ("Porta Vittoria" and "Porta Imperiale") and the defensive wall of Sabbioneta.
Works
Rote perpetue, per le quali si può con qual numero di due dadi si voglia, ovvero con due dadi secondo l'horologio d'Italia ritrovar quando si fa la luna (in Italian). Brescia: Francesco Marchetti. 1562.
Opera nuova di fortificare, offendere e difendere (in Italian). Brescia: Tommaso Bozzola.
The public source identifies “Girolamo Cattaneo” as italian architect and mathematician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Girolamo, Cattaneo and Italian.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 12, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q15917030. VIAF identifies the subject as 47835402. The Library of Congress control number is nr92010869. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1540, 1584 and 1562.
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This entry incorporates text from “Girolamo Cattaneo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.