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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.