Ricerc@Sapienza

This study investigates the contributions made by Gaspard Monge and the students of his School to the stereotomy of vaulted systems in France between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The complexity of the apparatuses and the generality of the proposed solutions express the extent of the contributions that descriptive geometry made to the applications that preceded it. First among these stereotomy, which, though in decline from an operational point of view, was considered fundamental in the schools that were then being founded.

This book intends to analyse how descriptive geometry spread through general, technical or artistic education, and thus in “polytechnic” schools, in different countries around the world. Our purpose is to go beyond the analysis of the development of the subject in individual countries. We do so by gathering and confronting the local experiences in order to highlight the parallel processes and the connections among them. We also seek to understand how they may have been provided by the circulation between countries and persons or by publications related to our subject.