312 edoardo demo
slowed down considerably. What for a time may have appeared a passing
crisis revealed itself, by the end of the 1520s, to be a total and utter col-
lapse; to use the words of Vincenzo Grimani, a Venetian patrician directly
involved in exploiting the mines at tretto and recoaro, in the “largest
and most copious mountains of silver [.. .] that provoked wonder in all of
Germany” suddenly “it seems that the veins of silver have been lost.”45 that
said, the will and investment capital to go forward were not lacking. In
order to resolve the crisis, in fact, efforts were intensified both technically
and economically; but nothing seemed capable of stopping the inexorable
decline to which Vicenza’s silver mines seem destined, not even recourse
to important and even historic innovations such as the use of gunpow-
der c.1574 near schio, a technique which during the 17th century would
become widespread in europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries, caolin was
extracted from Vicenza’s nearby mountains, and various attempts were
made to revive the silver mines, though without success.46
among the other mining centers in the republic’s territories, we must
also mention at least the agordino, particularly the mines of the Valle
Imperina, which would remain important up to the 20th century, and
above all the territories of Brescia and Bergamo (especially the camon-
ica, trompia, and sabbia valleys), which from the later Middle ages until
the 18th century were among the most important mining regions in Italy.
two pieces of data will suffice in that regard. It has been estimated that
in Brescia’s territory in the 16th century there were 15 functioning melt-
ing ovens for iron, the absolute majority of those present on the Italian
peninsula at the time; while in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the
amount of iron extracted from Brescia’s nearby valleys totalled 250 tons
per year, equal to one-third of the entire Italian production.47
the activity of mineral extraction also gave work to dozens of forges
that provided the iron necessary to sustain an important production of
manufactures destined for agricultural work and, above all, the arms
industry, for which Brescia was one of the european capitals of the age.
during the early modern period, Brescia’s arms and armor produc-
tion was a sector of absolute international importance. despite the jeal-
ous control of Venetian institutions for its great strategic value, Brescia’s
45 demo, “Le manifatture tra medioevo ed età moderna,” pp. 80–81.
46 Vergani, miniere e società nella montagna del passato; demo, “L’industria tessile nel
Veneto tra XV e XVI secolo,” pp. 73–81.
47 Vergani, miniere e società nella montagna del passato; Mocarelli,“Manufacturing acti-
vities in Venetian Lombardy,” pp. 325–26.