Long on display at the NRA National Sporting Arms Museum in Springfield, Mo., Beretta’s impeccably built Rinascimento (Renaissance) guns are now forever the property of the National Rifle Association and its members. Executed separately as a Set of Four rifles and a Set of Five shotguns, all nine guns were owned by American businessman Robert Jepson, Jr., owner of Jepson Associates and a longtime friend of Ugo Beretta. Conceived as a showcase of the skills of Beretta’s finest artisans and gun builders and in anticipation of the company’s upcoming 500th anniversary, the first Set of Five was completed in 1989. Shortly thereafter, Jepson commissioned the Set of Four, a panoply of rifles that paid homage to the “Big Five” African dangerous-game animals.
All nine guns were carefully engraved by Beretta Master Engraver Angelo Galeazzi, considered one of the pioneers of the “bulino” technique of engraving, in which the engraver uses only a sharp tool and hand pressure to carve designs into steel. In the company’s Set of Five, which took three years to complete, Galeazzi depicts the evolution of hunting, beginning from the Stone Age on Gun I and advancing through the use of bows and arrows and wheellocks into the present day. The final gun of the series, Gun V, depicts Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, surrounded by game animals. All firearms in the Set of Five are over-under shotguns, with English-style straight stocks crafted from highly figured nut briar wood held in reserve for Beretta’s special projects. The set is comprised of two 12-ga. guns, two 20 gauges and a single 28 gauge.
Beretta and Jepson followed with a commission for the Set of Four, all side-by-side hunting rifles with double triggers that are also hand-built and hand-engraved. Each rifle features one of Africa’s dangerous-game animals on the receiver sideplates, and all four guns have a leopard on the receiver bottom to complete the Big Five. The rifles are chambered in appropriate African big-game cartridges ranging from .30-’06 Sprg. to .600 Nitro Express.
