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Sofonisba --
Here is the collected wisdom of the Academy of St. Gabriel on whether your proposed armory -- I think you have decided to try for "Per pale sable and argent, bendy of six counterchanged"? -- is appropriate for Renaissance Italy.
The general consensus was that it is.
Zenobia Naphtali says,
>Wills on Florentine Heraldry gives some useful terms that support the
>Italian nomenclature. Although Contrasbarrato is not given
>explicitly they give 'Contrabandato' as 'Party per pale, so many bend
>counterchanged', 'Contrafasciato': party per pale, barry of so many pieces
>counterchanged. You are not quite right on your English translation:
>Contrasbarrato comes from Contra + Sbarrato: Sbarrato is Italian for Bendy
>Sinister (singular bend sinister: sbarra.) Apparently 'barry' translates
>into Italian as 'Fasciato', and fess is 'fascia', although barry of more
>than eight is blazoned as 'burrellato' (presumably equivalent to English
>'barruly.')
>
>So the general design is Italian (they have a name for it) but I'd suggest
>an even number of traits in the bendy sinister. Whether it is period or not
>I do not know.
Walraven von Nijmegen notes:
>There are actually quite a number of Flemish arms from the 16th century
>which are 5-striped bendy. A few of these have a "lion adumbrated" on the
>"metal" stripes only, which suggests that the "color" stripes are overall
>bends. Most of the arms, however, have no such charges and are quite
>ambiguous. In all cases, they have been rendered with equal-sized
>stripes.
Most of the rest of the discussion was about five stripes versus six, whether the stripes *have* to be of equal width, and other things that are no longer to the point since you'd like to try six stripes. People dug into their reference books and it was all quite educational!
for the Academy,
Christian de Holacombe