Vegecivs De re miltari
A 1511 military treatise by Vegetius, printed in Erfurt by Hans Knappe for soldiers and commanders, drawing on Roman army manuals. Its woodcuts show siege engines and weapons drawn in dense black hatching on plain pages, with numbered plate captions in the upper corners. A designer could take from them the hard, angular linework of early woodcut machinery, with rigging, wheels and crowded figures set in tight framed compositions.
