science and medicine in early modern venice 705
applications, were precisely the kinds of mechanical problems that the
Venetian patricians were interested in solving.
The Mechanical Problems was widely discussed in Venetian humanist
circles and was the subject of a flurry of translations, probably inspired by
the urgent technological tasks that confronted state officials. The Vene-
tian humanist Vittore Fausto (1480–1551?), who headed an arsenal crew in
building experimental ships, made the first latin translation of the work,
publishing the result in 1517.16 Fausto’s translation (later supplanted by an
edition published in 1525 by another Venetian, niccolò leonico Tomeo)
provided the theoretical basis for a much larger project: to use humanist
research to renew Venice’s shipbuilding methods. Fausto’s far-reaching
engineering projects were among the first renaissance attempts to apply
geometric principles to shipbuilding.17
Venetian humanism was thus distinct from the humanistic traditions
of other italian city-states in that it made practical demands on philoso-
phy, requiring that theoretical knowledge help solve technical problems.
in Venice, a flourishing book trade, a highly developed commercial math-
ematics tradition, and a famous arsenal that brought together a multitude
of crafts in one location all intersected with pragmatic patrician interests
to create a demand for a useful literary and scientific heritage.
Niccolò Tartaglia and the Science of BallisticsVenice’s utilitarian approach to scholarship was nowhere more evident
than in the application of mathematics to the understanding and
management of gunpowder artillery. niccolò Tartaglia, a self-educated
practical mathematician (maestro d’abbaco) who taught at a public school
in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, was the first person to advance
the idea that the mathematical study of gunshot could yield a science.18
Born in Brescia, Tartaglia spent most of his professional life in Venice,
where, working closely with printers, he produced italian editions of
euclid—the first published translation of the Elements in any vernacular
16 rose and drake, “Pseudo-aristotelian Questions,” pp. 77–78; Mary J. Henninger-Voss,
“How the ‘new Science’ of cannons Shook up the aristotelian cosmos,” Journal of the
History of Ideas 63 (2002), 380.
17 on Vettor Fausto’s activity at the arsenale, see ennio concina, “Humanism on the
Sea,” Mediterranean Historical Review 3 (1988), 159–65.
18 There is a large literature on Tartaglia, well summarized in Henninger-Voss, “The
‘new Science’ of cannons.”