Pietro Antonio Tomasello de Padua: un ingeniero militar véneto en la Sicilia de Carlos V

In 1522 the Viceroy of Sicily Ettore Pignatelli, Count of Monteleone, started a significant campaign for the strengthening of the outworks of the main cities located along the Sicilian coast: Palermo, Trapani, Milazzo, Siracusa and, after a few years, also Messina. The Royal Engineer Pietro Antonio Tomasello from Padua, a military technician from the Veneto region, was charged with renovating the island’s defensive system and introducing for the first time modern circular and polygonal ramparts in castles and city walls. Not well known until now is the work of this important engineer, who was active in Sicily from 1523 until his death in 1537, which has been reconstructed thanks to a large archival documentation. The new research highlights an unbroken line of continuity in Charles V’s warfare strategy, which was in place in Sicily since the time of the Viceroy Count of Monteleone. As a result, it becomes necessary to rethink the extraordinary character generally attributed to Ferrante Gonzaga’s military politics by numerous historians. This would include even rectifying the dates and the attributions of some of the fundamental modifications of Sicilian fortifications: the San Salvatore Fort in Messina, till now attributed to Antonio Ferramolino from Bergamo, the ramped and sloped defences in the Milazzo Castle and the circular keep in Palermo Castellammare (the latter two dated to the second half of the 15th century) instead are all works of Pietro Antonio Tomasello, carried on during the second quarter of the 16th century