An illustration from a book the title of which begins Bawkunst Oder Architectur aller fürnemsten/ Nothwendigsten/ angehœrigen Mathematischen vnd Mechanischen Kuensten/ eygentlicher Bericht/ vnd verstændtliche Vnderrichtung/ zu rechtem Verstandt der Lehr Vitruuij/ in Drey fürnemme Buecher abgetheilet… which seems to translate to: “Architecture (‘building-art’) or architecture of all the most important / necessary / related mathematical and mechanical arts / specific report / and understandable changes / rightly understood the teaching Vitruuij / divided into three volumes….”
This, of course, is not a building but a machine for knocking buildings over, or getting over the fortified walls of a building.
The whole book is filled with joyous diagrams; this one seems to be the beginning of a section labeled “Aus Geometrischen Grundt” or “From Geometric Grounds,” and might be captioned, “The sixth and last proposition of the first book of the Geometric Gunsmiths.” (I’m really not sure if that fourth word is leest, “read” or lezst, “last,” or something else … but it’s the Geometric Gunsmiths that seem to be the point here.)