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Architecture and memory: the Renaissance studioli of Federico de Montefeltro
Fig. 2.10. Directly beneath “FEDERICVS” we find Plato and Aristotle placed side-by-side. A statistical breakdown of these figures yields the following: two are from the Old Testament, six are ancient Greeks, one is Egyptian, and four are Roman. Fifteen of the twenty-eight are Christian (including four of Federico’s contemporaries), and twelve of these fifteen are in the bottom tier. Drawn by author and Kazushige Yoshitake.
Fig. 6.64. In the Battle of Volterra (1472), Federico’s swift victory (achieved in twenty-two days, avoiding a lengthy siege of one of the most strongly fortified Tuscan cities) resulted from the duke’s skillful interpretation of the daunting landscape surrounding the city. Here the exercise of hunting was believed to benefit a condottiere directly; by the familiarity gained of one’s own territory he would learn not only how to better defend it but also that he could easily translate this experience to other territories. Machiavelli believed hunting so valuable as to admonish that “[a] prince who is lacking in this skill is wanting in the first essentials of a leader; for it is this which teaches how to find the enemy, take up quarters, lead armies, plan battles and lay siege to towns with advantage” (The Prince, 90). Federico’s love for this peacetime activity was represented by the hunting horn suspended in the Gubbio studiolo.
Fig. 6.52. Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (ca. 1490), in which the young mistress of Ludovico Sforza holds an ermine. Kemp has noted that galée is Greek for ermine and therefore a pun on both the subject’s name and a declaration of her purity (Kemp, “Editorial notes for Circa 1492,” 271).
Fig. 2.15. Including the sword and mace (and an aggregate of candied fruit), twenty-four objects are displayed on the benches at Urbino. Elsewhere we find a dislocated box-drawer with the letters “CO” (containing two recorders), a jingle ring, a lute, three recorders, two pears, a container of candied fruits (with two spoons), a clavichord, a shin-guard and the golden spur of the Gonfaloniere (Knight of the Pope), a cushion, one waisted fiddle with a comb-bridge, another lute (upside-down), and three books, two of whose pages are “ruffled” as if by a nearby draft.
Fig. 6.80. Echoing the sentiments of Vitruvius, Francesco di Giorgio asserted that music – with its long, enormous, short and medium pauses – is necessary for the conference and proportion of any building. Di Giorgio’s discussion of proportions is rooted in the survey of ancient [Roman] ruins and held practical significances for Federico’s activities. In Book X of De architectura, Vitruvius addresses the proper tuning of ballistic weaponry. “So by the application of wedges, the catapults are tuned to the right note by a musical ear" (10.12.2). Drawn by Amelia Amelia after Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1492–1502), Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare (Il Polifilo, 1967).
Fig. 6.17. The portraits of the muses conceived for the Tempietto were compositionally akin to the ensemble of liberal arts in the Gubbio studiolo, as well as an earlier cycle of muses completed by Cosmé Tura between 1458 and 1463 for the d’Este studiolo at Belfiore.
Fig. 4.18. Alphabetic mnemonics from Robert Fludd (1574–1637), Utriusque cosmic maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica (Oppenhemii: Ære Johan-Theodori de Bry, typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617–21).
Fig. 2.25. There was likely some debate over a seven- or eight-sided figure for the cabinet door. In the mid 1470’s, Urbino court member Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini, otherwise known as Fra Carnivale, painted an octagonal figure in sepia tones, evoking intarsiated wood. Both figures are comprised of a single recursive line, suggesting that the selection of the heptagonal figure was deliberate.
Fig. 4.26. Taking the winged eye as his personal emblem, Alberti praised the eye as “more powerful than anything, swifter, more worthy; what more can I say? It is such as to be the first, chief, king, like a god of human parts. Why else did the ancients consider God as something akin to an eye, seeing all things and distinguishing each separate one” (Watkins, “L. B. Alberti's Emblem," 256–57). Alberti shared the sentiments of Nicholas of Cusa, who also associated the eye with an all-seeing divinity: “God …is called theos from this very fact that He beholdeth all things," including the “secret places” of the soul (Cusa, De Visione Dei, 7). The term theatre shares this divine etymology (théatron – seeing place). Drawn by Amelia Amelia after medal cast by Matteo Pasti.
Fig. 1.4. Astrolabe and armillary sphere, Urbino studiolo. Leonardo da Vinci states that “practice should always be based upon a sound knowledge of theory, of which perspective – wherein is found the glory not only of mathematical but also of physical science – is the guide and gateway” (cited by Winternitz, “Quattrocento Science in the Gubbio Study,” 111).
Fig. 4.39. Arca is a term Isidore of Seville links with arx, “one of the family of storage-room metaphors for memory” that represents, according to Carruthers, a visual pun “on the Temple citadel of Ezekiel, the ‘city on a hill’ in Matthew, and the Johannine ‘Heavenly Jerusalem'" (Isidore, Etymologiae, 15.2; also Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 19, 281 n. 31). The first image in Publicius’ Art of Memory, illustrating rules for places, depicts a fortified city on a hill. Romberch included such an image in his 1533 treatise. Publicius underscores the value of etymology, onomatopoeia and other forms of wordplay for the selection of memory images (Art of Memory, 21–22). Drawn by Amelia Amelia after Romberch's rendering of Publicius.
Fig. 2.1. Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro, drawn by Amelia Amelia after Piero della Francesca’s portraits of the duchess and duke of Urbino.
Fig. 3.3. A perspectival velo of intersections, by which each miniature window of visual information may be translocated to a reticulated sheet of paper, thereby reconstructing the desired vista. From Robert Fludd (1574–1637), Utriusque cosmic maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica (Oppenhemii: Ære Johan-Theodori de Bry, typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617–21). “The authority of Brunelleschi’s perspectives came from the clearly intelligible structure they gave to space; they also provided a method of practical construction. The simple scaffolding of orthogonal lines and lines converging toward the vanishing point determined a geometric network thanks to a play on ‘intersections;’ this network turned into a play of elementary figures which were easy to isolate; the squares of the pavement usually placed at the surface became trapezoids according to the perspectival effect, the squares placed at an angle turned into diamonds, etc.; …what one was left with at the end of the deconstruction of that space could be reconstructed on the painting as if it were a puzzle, that is to say like marquetry…the unifying function of the perspective clearly expresses a coherent mathematical thought, but the analytical and assembly procedure which comes from it is the technique of marquetry.” (Chastel, “Marqueterie et perspective au XV siècle,” 144–45: translation Anna Botta).
Fig. 7.1. Heptagonal fortress drawn by Amelia Amelia after Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1492–1502), Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare (Il Polifilo, 1967).
Fig. 1.5. The theological virtue of Faith, south wall, Urbino studiolo. Martin Kemp has described Alberti’s (h)istoria as “roughly equivalent to what later academic theorists would call ‘history painting,’ that is to say, a human narrative drawn from some significant secular or Christian story. Alberti’s use may also include allegorical representations and perhaps also such devotional images as the Virgin in company with the saints” (Alberti, On Painting, 99 n. 35).
Fig. 3.5. Detail of the virtues from the Allegory of Good Government, drawn by Amelia Amelia after frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Sala dei Nove, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
Fig. 4.31. Federico and Guidobaldo listening attentively to an oration in a room designated for this purpose. Drawn by Amelia Amelia after a work by Justus van Ghent.
Fig. 6.39. Axonometric detail of the Urbino ducal palace. The rooms are: 1) studiolo 2) loggia 3) dressing chamber 4) duke’s bedchamber 5) sala d’udienza 6) sala degli angeli. Drawn by author and Amelia Amelia, based on a palace axonometric by Renato Bruscagli.