From there on, it can be investigated in what theories this design is embedded and where these ideas originate from. Before this question can be answered, the different construction phases and the logic behind this will have to become clear. It will be tried to determine what approach to military architecture has led to its initial design and the applied modifications. Within this case study the main aim is to gain a better understanding of this fortification. Because of the unusual shape of its outline, the São Sebastião fortress at Mozambique Island forms an interesting example. This research focuses on a fort where aspects of its design are not built in agreement with the principals of renaissance military architecture as these are defined in most modern day literature. This hypothesis will be tested in a case study. The assumption made in this study is that more variation has existed within renaissance military theories, than is commonly acknowledged. Such an outlook makes it difficult to explain fortification forms which do not comply with what is considered to be the standard. As will be discussed within this research, this has led to studies in which absolute consensus on the principals of renaissance military architecture has been implied. The image of a homogeneous style which has been universally applied could, however, lead to oversimplification. As historian John Hale has noted: ‘the application of the angle bastion to forts and town walls led to a homogeneity of style wherever the Europeans settled overseas.’ ‘The international style par excellance of the renaissance was that of military architecture.’ 1 Indeed, such defences can be found in places as far apart as Malacca, Recife, Cape Town and Havana. The most prominent invention of renaissance military architecture has undoubtedly been the angle bastion. These two very different evolvements eventually resulted in the establishment of European fortifications along many far away shores, following new insights in the field of military engineering. Contemporaneously, within Europe, fortification architecture was in a phase of intensive development. The advancements on the study of correlations between these charts will be shown, thus confirming that the combination of traditional and digital methods of investigation open very promising perspectives to the study of unsolved questions in the History of Cartography.At the end of the fifteenth century Portuguese voyages had reached out to all continents of the earth. Later, each chart will be examined with the help of cartometric methods to access their implicit geometry. First, a comparative study of the toponomy of a common area of the charts will be presented. The present paper proceeds from where those researchers stopped investigating and proposes a fresh look on this cartographic material by combining a traditional historical approach with modern digital techniques. However, they did not pursue these observations further. Later, they also mentioned affinities between those two charts and the famous chart known as Kunstmann III. The authors of the well-known collection Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica hinted at connections between two anonymous portolan charts from the beginning of the sixteenth century, namely the portolan chart at the Bibliothèque Municipale of Dijon and a fragment of a chart kept in Lisbon in the Archive at Torre do Tombo.
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