Original subtitles

Good morning. This lecture is a departure from our usual examination of the work of one or more

artists. Until now, we have chosen not to treat individual Italian city-states other than

Florence. Urbino offers us a compact opportunity to do so. Today, the city of Urbino seems a magical

world tucked away in its own hilly landscape, an escape from modern civilization, despite its busy

university. But in the 15th century, Urbino commanded a larger territory and an outsized

importance. This was due to the ruling house of Montefeltro, a dynasty of condottieri, soldiers

of fortune, mercenaries, since the 12th century, whose apogee was the short career of Federico da

Montefeltro, who was born in 1422 and died in 1482. He was first count, then duke, in 1474 and after,

of this stronghold in the marches. Its location near the Adriatic, which you can see on your map,

meant an awareness of different political and cultural centers, Venice, Dalmatia, across the

Adriatic. Federico was an almost equal blend of soldier and scholar, an ideal Renaissance balance

of the active and contemplative lives, and that was the key to the richness of his court. Within their palace

fortress, he and his redoubtable wife, Battista Sforza, surrounded themselves with beauty and culture. His

reputation and wealth enabled him to summon artists and architects to Urbino, from Dalmatia, from Flanders, from Florence, or Siena.

Our just-concluded examination of the art of Raphael offers a nice segue to a lecture on the place in which he was born.

You're looking at Raphael's self-portrait painted in Florence, probably about 156.

Raphael was born in this significant city-state of Urbino. Had he been a generation older,

Raphael would certainly have been in the artistic service of the Duke of Urbino, whose dedication to culture

made his court one of the most refined in Italy. The Duke did have one great artist in the neighborhood,

Piero della Francesca, who became intimately associated with Federico's court, as we've already seen.

We already looked at these wonderful portraits, the paired portraits by Piero della Francesca of Battista Sforza, the wife of the Duke, and Federico da Montefeltro.

Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro painted probably between 1465 and 1472. They're not dated.

And in these two profile portraits, we notice the classical purity of the profile pose, which was still the pose that portraits were painted in at this point.

It hadn't changed to the three-quarter pose that we have since seen in Raphael, among others.

The landscape of their territory is seen behind and below them as though they were standing on one of the balconies of their palace.

It is noticeable, by the way, that the landscape behind Federico is marked by a lake and a river, which may suggest his professional activity in the world beyond Urbino,

that is to say, a means of travel beyond Urbino, suggesting that he was not, as it were, landlocked in his duchy at Urbino.

The landscape behind these two, by the way, is a continuous landscape, essentially, despite that variation in the water.

We glanced briefly at the reverse sides of these portraits, and I show them to you again, with the allegorical triumphs of the couple.

Such imagery had long been popularized by the triumphs described in Petrarch's poetry in the 14th century.

Here, in the left panel, which is the back of his portrait, the duke's chariot, drawn by a pair of white horses, carries the seated duke,

who is dressed in full armor here at the back.

He's crowned by fame, the white-robed figure with wings who stands behind him, and he is accompanied by the four cardinal virtues who have hitched a ride on the wagon as it processes across the painting.

The duchess, who was recently deceased, is accompanied by faith and charity.

She reads her prayer book. She's seated here, and she's reading her prayer book.

Faith and charity are in the front of the carriage, and she's flanked by figures.

It's uncertain what allegories they are, but they may perhaps represent youth and age, specifically since she had recently died.

Her carriage is drawn not by the white steeds that we saw, but by a pair of unicorns.

And you recall that unicorns are symbols of chastity. We encountered them in Pisanello's bronze medal of Cecilia Gonzaga.

The landscapes here are very like those on the front, and again, they mirror Urbino's countryside.

And again, it's interesting that Federigo's triumph is associated with a body of water, while Batista Sforza's is not.

Federigo and Batista Sforza created the renowned ambience of their court together.

But in the first instance, the ducal palace is a fortress, signifying the duke's renown as a condottiere.

Its huge mass crowns the rock around which the town gathers for protection.

It is an extraordinarily imposing mass from this view.

I'll move a little closer to the same and point out some of the elements in the complex of this palace.

On the left, because it is dominant, I will begin with the bell tower and dome of the cathedral.

They're not physically adjoining, but they abut the palace. They're very, very close.

And you have the domed cathedral, the bell tower beside it.

This is the apse, obviously, of the church, with the semicircular shape of the wall.

And then, as you move across, and we are looking from the west-southwest.

That is the side of the palace that we see.

And you have the bulk of the palace here, moving across.

And then, a very famous element which we will return to.

And that is the tower façade, the small tower façade, these small circular towers,

which flank a very beautiful set of superimposed lodges.

Like most palaces, this one took form over many years and under many architects.

Parts of it were never finished, such as the north and east façades facing onto large piazzas,

where only a little of the marble revetment, the clothing, the covering of the brick, was ever achieved.

Here is the east façade on the left and the north façade in shadow here on the right.

If you look at the east façade in sunlight to the left, it's the earliest.

It was begun in 1447.

And it still has, though you can't really tell it from here, but it still has late medieval details.

The windows are curved tops, but they are divided into two lights by a colonette in the middle.

And this is a Florentine style, which had already been well-established in the late Middle Ages.

And it has not been replaced here yet with a Renaissance window, as it were.

And as you see, that side, the sun side, is completely lacking in the revetment,

that word meaning clothing or covering for the brick walls or also for rubble walls,

if you're talking about Roman architecture, for instance.

This is a very large piazza facing that long wing.

On the other hand, on the shadow side here, the north façade faces a small piazza between the palace and the nearby cathedral.

You can just see the portico of the cathedral at the right-hand side of the image here.

It has, that is to say, this side of the palace has Renaissance windows.

You can see that these are Renaissance-style windows with a horizontal pediment and colonettes.

These are really pilasters flanking the windows, and not divided by a column in the middle, but a single light.

Of course, we see modern window panes in there now, but this was a single opening, no architectural central member.

A very small amount of marble revetment does cover the lower part of this wing, but it never got beyond that.

The windows look lonely up here because they're highly finished in stone,

and around them is simply this brick façade awaiting the marble that never was placed upon it.

This Renaissance façade, and this is the first Renaissance motive we've seen on this side,

this Renaissance façade is owed to the architect Luciano Lorana, who came from Dalmatia, across the Adriatic.

I'm going to show you the most admired part of the palace, which is also his work,

and that is the interior courtyard, the courtile, begun about 1468.

It's an inner courtyard in the purest Renaissance style.

This enters, by the way, directly off that shadowed façade that we were looking at through the portals that you saw there,

and then into this wonderful courtyard.

His presence here, by the way, Lorana's, reminds us of the proximity of Urbino to the Adriatic,

and the considerable movement of artists and others from one shore to another.

People often worked more, and this applied to trade as well, across the Adriatic

than they did across the mountains and the spine of Italy, for instance,

which were more of a hindrance than the sea sometimes proved.

I want you to notice, while looking at this image of the courtyard, however,

that there is an alteration, and an unfortunate one, in terms of the purity of the architecture.

The upper two stories, those attic stories, even though they sit back, that is to say,

they are recessed in space from the lower two, they're additions, they are not by Lorana,

and they do, unfortunately, temper the absolute balance and proportion of this courtyard.

So, if you can think them away, these upper two levels, or block them out with your hand,

you will get a much better idea of the elegance of the elevation,

which stopped at the crown, large crown cornice of the second story,

right across here, if we're looking at the end of the courtyard.

There is an elegant inscription, that is to say, in large Roman capitals,

there is an inscription which runs across both levels,

both the first, above the first arcade, and above the pilasters on the second arcade,

and it is a composition of words in praise of the Duke of Urbino's undoubted virtues.

And more than that, it really helps the architecture,

because you can't appreciate it at such a distance here,

but the capitals are so clearly spaced, carefully spaced,

that they actually further the harmonious effect of the architecture.

Nothing was done here carelessly at all.

While we have this one, I will show you another view in a moment, a lower view,

but we can see the corners here, which you can't otherwise see easily.

And if you're looking at them, you see that he has very successfully achieved a resolution

of what happens in the corner of the courtyard.

Previous Renaissance palaces, such as the Medici Palace in Florence,

in the courtyard, had the arches in the corner from this wall, and then from this wall,

meeting on a single column.

They had to share a landing point, if you will, and it was awkward, unresolved.

Here, he's very carefully built the corner out with larger, I think you can see it on both sides,

with a larger pier and a column for the arch here, and another one,

a separate one for the arch coming down the side.

It's very, very smoothly, smoothly achieved.

Here's a view from the court floor point of view.

You see, you still are aware of the upper two stories, though not quite so strongly,

but one should try to ignore them if possible.

This courtyard, which is known as a court of honor, has since its completion

been regarded as one of the most perfect Renaissance courtyards anywhere,

with columns and capitals of truly classical purity.

They compare well with Roman columns in Rome, which may have served as models.

The white stone pilasters of the second story, looking up again, these white stone pilasters,

have capitals that harmonize with those of the columns below,

and these pilasters are placed against an only slightly darker brick wall,

and it's a wonderful lightness that is achieved by not going, not having dark colors

or great heaviness on the second story.

The lightness, both of tone and of weight, which carries from that lightness of tone,

seems easily supported visually, you see, by the graceful open arcade below this.

The cornice above the arcade wraps completely around the courtyard, unifying the space entirely.

We saw the small tower facade on the other side, and I'll go back to it now.

It's called, in Italian, the facciata dei Torricini, Torricini, small towers.

So this two-towered, small-towered facade on the western facade, commanding a view of the town and the countryside,

and marked by these graceful, superimposed loggias.

A loggia is an open gallery, and it can be applied to a long row of arcades on a ground level,

but here it applies as well to these superimposed balconies on the west side.

This extraordinarily gracious ensemble punctuates that long, massive outer wall of the palace.

This is also the work of Luciano Lorana.

For reasons we don't know, Lorana left Urbino in 1472, dying in 1478.

He was replaced as court architect, of course there was much more work to do inside and out,

by the important Sienese architect and artist Francesco di Giorgio Martini,

whose sculpture we have seen in an earlier lecture.

I want to show you this small-tower facade seen from below as well.

The middle loggia of the three that you see here is the one on the level of the piano nobile,

the noble floor, the second floor, but the principal living level of the palace,

and behind which, flanked by the towers, are the duke's quarters, that is to say, behind this balcony.

His bedroom, wardrobe, audience chamber, private chapel, and above all his private study,

are nestled in the center of his apartment complex.

The vast interior of this palace is today the National Museum of the Marches,

and therefore largely devoid of furnishings.

This makes it difficult to envision the welcoming quality that these rooms cavern as to us frequently today,

but they must have seemed very welcoming when they were new.

And I'm going to quickly show you three of those rooms.

The throne room is what we're looking at now, an enormous room, as you see,

with elegant vaulting and elaborately decorated fireplace,

and elaborately decorated fireplace here.

There's another at the end of the room.

And it is a room, which in this photograph does have some tapestries on the walls,

and these, of course, were standard practical decoration in palaces,

practical because they diminished the cold that emanated from the masonry walls,

and they also partly muffled the echoing spaces.

Another room in the Ducal apartments is the Sala degli Angeli, the Hall of Angels,

which is a reception hall introducing the suite of the Duke's apartments.

Its name comes from the small dancing angels and music,

their dancing and music-making angels on the frieze of this great fireplace.

They're done by a sculptor whose name was Domenico Rosselli.

These white and gold angels on a blue ground are reminiscent of Donatello's animated putti

on his canteria, the singing gallery that we saw earlier.

No photograph can encompass the compact space which is the gem of the palace.

It is this small private study of the Duke, known as the studiolo, known everywhere as the studiolo.

Shelves and wardrobes holding his renowned library, his scientific and musical instruments, and even his armor,

were concealed by doors which are decorated with superb trompe-l'oeil inlaid woodwork.

Trompe-l'oeil, of course, is the French phrase for deceive the eye,

and these are some of the most remarkable examples in intarsia, in inlaid wood.

These inlaid doors, which we will return to, were surmounted by a double row of portraits,

and you can see the bottom row above, of famous men of the past and present.

This private study, this refuge, nourished the intellectual resources of the Duke.

His chapel adjoined it, and adjoining that was the loggia that we looked at, which overlooked his territory.

A territory, by the way, that he governed, it was said with unusual benevolence.

He had, it appears, the common touch.

The studiolo, or small study, of the Duke of Urbino is one of the most famous rooms of the Italian Renaissance.

Arranged and decorated between 1474 and 1476, it was the Duke's refuge, his place of study and reflection and correspondence,

which held also parts of his wardrobe, cupboards for scientific and musical instruments,

and a famous library, which we are told he regarded as, quote, the crowning glory of this great palace.

Everything was on shelves, concealed behind doors, decorated with these designs.

Some of them were, some of these designs are themselves illusionistic replicas of the things which one would have found inside.

You see that doors are shown ajar. Look in this photograph at the bottom.

This seems to be open. This is all a flat surface.

This latticework door just seems to be open. It is all inlaid wood on a flat surface.

Nothing certain is known about the artists involved in these designs, though several names have been associated with it,

suggested, including Botticelli's as a designer.

And skilled Florentine craftsmen, possibly from the workshop of Giuliano di Maiano,

have been accredited with the actual execution.

But there's very little documentation.

I want to show you a series of the individual inlaid wood pieces, which we're looking at.

There is, for instance, this birdcage and clock.

The birdcage is on your right. The clock is this open mechanism.

Here is the long pendulum hanging from it.

It looks as though you're looking right through the door.

It's wonderfully effective.

The objects depicted were probably selected for their geometric or perspective complexity.

It's playing games and setting up the game in a very amusing and clever fashion.

This particular door is a marvel, I think, of mathematically precise illusionism.

Then there is the open cupboard with books on your left, door wide open,

and an allegorical, a niche with an allegorical figure here on the right.

It looks like we have a niche with a sculpture in it, the allegorical figure of Hope.

And below, on this lower level, there are instruments, musical instruments, lying upon a shelf.

Or there is the door which has the bookshelves on it.

Both doors open and showing wonderful bookshelves, one with an hourglass atop it,

a symbol of mortality, transience of life right there with the symbols of knowledge.

Very interesting pairing there.

The Duke's famous library, by the way, which was in this room, is now part of the Vatican Library.

This became a papal property later.

Here is another.

This is a reading stand on a desk.

It is, you see it, it is the kind of reading stand that you could put books on four sides,

another one leaning against its pedestal down here, a table below that.

It's as though we had a small study within the small study.

Or this terrace.

Here, it is as though you glanced to your right and you saw a pair of columns or flat pilasters here.

And then a terrace with a squirrel and a still life in a basket.

And then across the terrace, a view through an arcade onto the landscape around the palace.

Now, of course, everything here in this woodwork is in the natural tones of the wood used.

It's not painted.

So, there's never any question of a complete illusion of reality.

Only constant astonishment at the artist's skill.

But it's still astounding to see the effects that the artists have achieved.

Above the woodwork, the wall is hung with two tiers of portraits of famous learned men,

from antiquity to the Duke's day.

Justus of Ghent, a Flemish artist who was invited to Urbino, painted most of the portraits.

In our very first lecture, we saw his portrait of Petrarch.

Here is his blind Homer.

No particular logic governed the choice of the 28 illustrious men.

So far as we can tell, there are Christian and Hebrew and pagan figures, writers and popes and philosophers.

Some of them were friends or patrons of the Duke.

Some of them from the distant past.

In sum, they represented the intellectual, the broad intellectual and historical range of the Duke's interests,

and we may assume that they were his personal choice.

Here is Solomon, King Solomon seated, who in the studiolo is placed directly beside Moses.

By 1475, Justus of Ghent was apparently in Rome, leaving some of these portraits unfinished.

We don't know the circumstances of his departure, but after 1474, a Spaniard from Castile, named Pedro Beroguete,

was brought in to complete the unfinished work.

Beroguete extensively reworked the unfinished paintings, even changing the architectural settings.

All the paintings were removed from Urbino in 1632, after the death of the last Duke.

And today, 14 are in the Louvre.

14 have been reassembled in the studiolo, together with photographs of the rest of them.

No small part of the appeal of the studiolo is its location within the palace.

If he so desired, Federico de Montefeltro had only to take a few steps from his place of seclusion,

and he could be standing on his balcony of the twin-towered façade,

master of all the tranquil landscape that lay below and stretched to the horizon.

And beyond the horizon lay the wider world in which he led his army in the service of other rulers.

Once again, we see the interplay between the active and the contemplative life,

so much discussed in the Quattrocento, and so completely exemplified by Federico de Montefeltro.

A beautiful small chapel, the Cappella del Perdonno, built probably about 1476.

It means the chapel of pardon, or forgiveness, on the ground floor of the palace,

beneath the apartments we've been looking at.

And this was where sacred relics belonging to the Montefeltro family were kept.

I show it to you because it's been tantalizingly suggested that this was the original location

of Piero della Francesca's enigmatic flagellation, which we discussed in the tenth lecture,

and which we see here again.

It could not have been, this painting, an altarpiece above the altar,

but it could have been the altar frontal, mounted on the face of the altar one step below,

one step below the above, pardon me, the floor level.

The dimensions match.

The dimensions of the painting and the dimensions of the altar frontal match,

and the perspective would work smoothly to somebody standing on that lower level,

not up where the photograph is taken, and looking at this painting,

whose perspective is otherwise somewhat unusual.

It's also fascinating to know that the room parallel to this sacred chapel

was a room called the Small Temple of the Muses,

pagan mythology balancing Christian faith,

yet another indication of the reach and balance of the Duke's mind and temperament.

I have mentioned Pedro Beruguete, the artist from Castile.

Here is his portrait of Federico de Montefeltro and his son, Guido Baldo, painted about 1477.

The exalted heir of this double portrait is owed to the fact that it is a state portrait.

It's a formal state portrait.

And by the way, it's still in the Ducal Palace in the museum now there.

This painting consciously reflects the dignity and diplomatic achievements of the Duke.

Federico wears the collar of the Order of the Ermine, which was bestowed by the King of Naples,

and he wears the Order of the Garter, given him by the King of England.

His dynastic pretensions are embodied in his young son, standing to the left, Guido Baldo, who was born in 1472.

Here is a profile portrait in stone of Guido Baldo, done probably in the 1490s and attributed to Francesco di Giorgio,

who was working there as architect.

Guido Baldo succeeded his father in 1482, and in due time with his refined Duchess, Elisabetta Gonzaga,

he continued the traditions of the court at Urbino.

It was there that the famously cultivated conversations, stimulated by her salon,

inspired the young Baldessari Castiglione, here he is as a somewhat older figure,

the young Castiglione who spent many evenings in late supper entertainment and conversation,

where, as he put it, intriguing questions were asked.

Those dinners served as the setting for his book, The Courtier, which appeared in 1527,

alas, long after the early death of Guido Baldo, childless, in 158.

By then also, Urbino was losing its long independence.

This is also, I think, an appropriate place to look for a moment at a painting called The Ideal City,

whose date and authorship are unknown, although it's surely from the last third of the Quattrocento.

It is one of three paintings that are closely related, this one remaining in the palace today,

all three presumably coming from the same source.

But we don't know who made it.

It's been variously attributed to the architect Lorana, to Piero della Francesca, to Alberti, Leon Battista Alberti.

In other words, you've got three men there who all practiced architecture, including Piero at some time,

and that would seem to fit the image here.

And others, other people have been advanced as possible artists of this really striking painting.

Regardless, this essay, in perfection, is believed by most people to have originated here in Urbino,

in this circle of cultured idealists who were also men and women of the world.

It resembles a strikingly rational stage set to be looked at,

but its mysterious vacantness has also caused some intriguing questions to be asked.

Thank you for your attention.