Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento (review)

This fine collection of fourteen studies, the product of an international conference held in Bologna in 2001, provides a rich foundation for understanding the art and science of water in northern and central Italy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In an introductory essay, the editors point to the wide range of hydraulic activities that developed in this era, including the reclamation of vast tracts of lowland and marsh; the circulation of skilled men and capital; the use of new pumping and irrigation machines, along with new instruments and methods of measurement; the production of treatises, drawings, and maps; and the creation of new administrative structures for water management.

In an overview, Salvatore Ciriacono places land reclamation in a broad European context, showing that canalization, embankment, and other methods of securing land for cultivation constituted a response to rising sixteenth-century populations and the need for more grain. Most of the other essays consist of in-depth studies of particular areas. Franco Cazzola surveys land reclamation in the Po River Valley, beginning with geographic considerations and then addressing technical and political aspects of reclamation in a river valley that extended across several territorial boundaries. In a richly documented essay, Alessandra Fiocca details the complex contributions of Venetians to the hydraulic projects of the Este family in Ferrara during the second half of the sixteenth century, including land reclamation and attempts to systematize the course of the Reno River. She points to an active arena of empirical practice, intellectual exchange, and authorship pertaining to water. Paolo Carpeggiani investigates the activities of the engineer Gabriele Bertazzolo (1570–1626), his work for the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua, and especially his project for opening navigation of the Neckar River in southwest Germany. Bertazzolo also features in Carlo Togliani's study of a single site, the navigation lock on the River Mincio at Governolo near Mantua. Togliani's account is based in part on the writings and drawings of Bertazzolo, who constructed the lock.

Investigating hydraulic engineering in the Sabaudi territories (Piedmont), Nicola Vassallo includes detailed accounts of particular engineers and their work in constructing canals and engineering flood control. Luciano Roncai's essay on the topographical and cartographical drawings of Smeraldo Smeraldi (1553–1634) shows that they were closely connected to the administrative needs of Parma, where Smeraldi was a city engineer and surveyor. Another locus of hydraulic activity was Rome, where periodic flooding of the Tiber caused immense damage. Paolo Buonora's study focuses primarily on the period after the great flood of 1598, including the establishment of the Congregazione delle Acque by Pope Urban VIII. Buonora suggests that water regulation reached an appreciable level of understanding in Rome, but that it was tied to practice rather than any theory about the behavior of rivers.

Renaissance and early-modern hydrology took an interest in machinery such as pumps, waterwheels, and gearing. Carlo Poni discusses the diffusion of waterpowered silk mills from Bologna north through the Veneto in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Daniela Lamberini provides a valuable table of privileges for invention bestowed by the Medici dukes in Florence between 1549 and 1628; of 180 privileges, more than a third were related to hydraulics. Marcus Popplow discusses the relationships between privileges for invention and the illustrated books called "theaters of machines." Popplow argues that their authors used these books to show potential patrons what might be done but dispensed with the detail required to actually build the machines. Patrons themselves bestowed privileges in order to lure inventors and their inventions (often components of hydraulic machinery) into their own territories.

Other essays emphasize cultural and intellectual contexts. Vittorio Marchis discusses the symbolic importance of the spectacular images of machines that proliferated in this period. They represent not only the power of patrons but also the cultural efficacy of the mechanical and technological matters beginning to occupy a new position within learned and aristocratic culture. Alexander Keller undertakes a detailed comparison of two hydrological treatises...