Italian masters of Renaissance artillery

The numerous innovations in Italian artillery introduced during the Renaissance were undoubtedly representative of significant social, economic, and political dynamics. The development of more effective armaments resulted not only from the changing patterns of contemporary warfare, but also from the technological efflorescence which characterized the entire period: in the “trading zones” of public arsenals and private workshops, Italian gunmakers conducted continuous experimentations in order to improve upon early, cumbersome bombards and design powerful new cannons, often in collaboration with artists, soldiers, and officers. Forward-looking statesmen, above all, promoted technological transfers through specific policies on the government of artillery, purportedly introduced between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. This political interest in firearms raised also a cultural issue on their diffusion: in humanistic literature, in military handbooks, and in technical treatises, guns appealed because they were modern and ingenious, an iconographical representation of statecraft, and an identifying symbol of the new Renaissance world.