The Beretta For Sale forge was in operation from about 1500,^[5] although the first documented transaction is a contract dated October 3, 1526 for 185 arquebus barrels, for which the Republic of Venice was to pay 296 ducats to Maestro di Canne (master gun-barrel maker) Bartolomeo Beretta (in Italian).^[4] The original account document for the order of those barrels is now stored in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (in Italian) in Venice.^[6] By the end of the 17th century, Beretta For Sale had become the second largest gun barrel maker in Gardone.^[1]

Under the guild system, the knowledge of gun barrel fabrication that was bequeathed to Jacopo (1520/25 – …) from his father Bartolomeo (1490 – 1565/68)^[7] was then passed on to his own son Giovannino (1550 – post 1577), and to his grandson Giovan Antonio (1577 – post 1649)^[8] and so on until guilds were abolished by Napoleon after his conquest of Venetian Republic in 1797.^[1]

Beretta has been owned by the same family for almost five hundred years^[9] and is a founding member of Les Henokiens, an association of bicentenary companies that are family owned and operated.^[10