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‘Arrest of St. James’, detail of a panel madę by Leonardo di Ser Giovanni in 1371, on the right side of the Pistoia Cathedral silver altar. Notę the large shield, similar to examples found in some earlier frescoes.

tura, been modelled on the Muslim mountaineers of Granada. Crossbowmen remained vital but were increasingly supplanted by hand-gunners, who were easier to train and whose weapons were cheaper to produce.

The earliest Italian hand-gun, the schiopetło, may even have been known in the late 13th

century. Schiopettieri, hand-gunners, were certainly increasingly numerous among the fixed garrisons of the 14th and early 15th centuries. By then similarly armed units were also included in many field armies. The large numbers of Milanese hand-gunners clearly worried the Venetians in the 1440S; and their importance was firmly established by 1482 when, during the War of Ferrara, the Milanese had 1,250 hand-guns and only 233 crossbows. This force also included 352 arąue-buses, a far morę effective firearm with a spring-

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