Leonardo Turriano e a produção fabril em Portugal no primeiro quartel do século XVII: o seu contributo no complexo tecnológico‑militar de Barcarena (Oeiras), com base na documentação compulsada e nas escavações arqueológicas realizadas

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10402498

Résumé

We describe the action taken by the Cremonese Leonardo Turriano (c. 1550‑1629) in Barcarena, between 1618 and 1621/1622, in the scope of gunpowder production, when he designed and supervised the construction of a vast factory building, introducing manufacturing technology using galga mills, already previously used in other gunpowder factories in the Portuguese overseas space. The other aspect of the activity carried out in Barcarena by this Chief Engineer of the Kingdom, a position he had held since 1591, involved the recovery of the Ferrarias building, in order to the production of harquebushes and muskets other than nails and rigging for shipbuilding, which at the time were abandoned.

Such initiatives are now especially well known for the notable drawings made by Turriano included in a codex preserved in the National Library of Portugal, accompanied by a descriptive text prepared by himself after he had ceased to function in Barcarena following the exoneration, in 1621, by Filipe IV (Filipe III of Portugal) of the Viceroy Dom Diogo da Silva, Marquês de Alenquer.

For the knowledge of the works carried out in Barcarena by Turriano, important royal correspondence and other coeval documentation, preserved in Portuguese and Spanish archives, are published. This conclusions were completed with the results obtained in the archaeological excavations conducted by the author in 2009 and which led to the positive identification of the Ferrarias building, founded by King D. João II, in 1487 which were at the origin of the technological‑military complex of Barcarena, whose activity ran without interruption for more than 500 years, ceasing only in 1988.