The title of the first chapter accords with that in an earlier manuscript in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence (Ms 2525), "Il primo capo tratta universalmente dell'uffitio del capitano dell' Arteglieria, con che ordine, modo et diligenza egli habbia à procedure, ad ogni cosa appartinenti alla munitione dell' Artegl[eri]a et all' ufficio suo", dated ca. 1529-30 (cf. Mariano D'Ayala, Bibliografia militare-italiana [1854], p. 159). The third chapter contains illustrations of siege devices similar to those in Franz Helm's "Armamentarium Principale oder Kriegsmunition und Artillerey-Buch" (1625), which was originally written around 1530.

Some paper (and text) loss through oxidation of the ink, restored and silked. Rebacked, retaining part of the old spine, by Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1919, according to old pencil note on flyleaf.

Provenance: from the collection of Thomas Fremantle, 3rd Baron Cottesloe (1862-1956), commander of the Territorial Army and president of the Society for Army History Research. On a note pasted to the flyleaf, Cottesloe writes: "This was in the library of Wistow Hall, Leicester, during the lifetime of Sir Henry St John Halford Bt (1828-97) but nothing is known as to how or when it came there" (dated Wistow, September 1945).