A first edition, Italian work considered to be the earliest printed book on metallurgy published in Europe. The work was written in Venice by Vannoccio Biringuccio (c. 1480 – c. 1539), an Italian metallurgist of Siena, Italy, who died before the work was published in 1540. De la Pirotechnia includes descriptions of topics such as mining, metallurgy, chemistry, gunpowder, military arts, fireworks, founding and casting processes, and potentially the earliest known account of typecasting. Biringuccio also provides insights into the humanistic philosophy of the Italian Renaissance, and alchemy is also discussed.

Notable technological processes described and illustrated by numerous woodcut prints include reverberatory furnaces' liquidation of silver from copper by means of lead, bell casting, canon founding, manufacture of steel, and the medical use of gold. Other significant innovations described include the first known mention of blue cobalt, manganese, and the use of sodium chloride for separating gold and silver from baser metals. The work is digitized in its entirety.