Urbino

In 1506 Pietro Bembo decided not to follow a political career in the Republic of Venice, and to devote himself to study. He did not succeed to settle in Rome, but, thanks to Elisabetta Gonzaga, he was received by the Duke of Urbino, where he lived until 1512. These years were crucial for the preparation of Prose della volgar lingua and his collection of Rime. The letters he wrote in this period are considered, and throw light upon the working out of his literary ideas, where Petrarch was a dominating model and which eventually brought him to turn away from the courtly life. For this reason later in his life he may have eliminated a good number of letters written in these years. Some dubious datations of his epistolary are discussed.

Giovedì 13 luglio 2017, ore 17:30
Sala Convegni, Palazzo Ducale di Urbino
INAUGURAZIONE

Mostra: IL RITRATTO RITROVATO.
IL CARDINALE GIANFRANCESCO ALBANI E LE ARTI, TRA ROMA E URBINO

13 luglio – 29 ottobre 2017
Urbino - Palazzo Ducale, Salotto della Duchessa

[press release] Il Direttore della Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Peter Aufreiter, è lieto di aver promosso e realizzato questa mostra, curata da Lucia Simonato, sul bellissimo busto-ritratto in marmo del cardinale Gianfrancesco Albani, che di recente è stato rintracciato dalla studiosa presso il Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza dell’Università “Carlo Bo” di Urbino, andando ad arricchire il catalogo dello scultore carrarese Domenico Guidi.
Ospitata nel raffinato Salotto della Duchessa del Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, l’elegante esposizione restituisce un importante tassello alla conoscenza non solo dell’attività dell’artista, ma anche del suo committente, il cardinal Gianfrancesco Albani. In un vero e proprio ‘concerto di arti’, tra dipinti di Carlo Maratti, disegni di Giuseppe Passeri, medaglie degli Hamerani, ritratti in marmo e in bronzo di Lorenzo Ottoni e Guidi, la presentazione del busto intende anche fare luce sulle scelte collezionistiche e di patronage dell’Albani, che già prima di diventare papa con il nome di Clemente XI è riuscito a donare ad Urbino un “secondo Rinascimento”.
Collaborano alla mostra, con i loro prestiti, collezionisti privati, musei italiani e stranieri, l’Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, il Comune di Urbino e, in primis, l’Università di Urbino.

The papers considers, with a comparative approach, the architecture of vertical connections and city edges. We hypothesize that the city edge, when its elevation overwhelms the surrounding urban fabric, cannot be redesigned within a basic typological repertoire. This research considers the transformations of the edge in historical towns, taking into consideration the architectural models used and investigating the contextual deformations impressed. The design of vertical connections between different city levels redefines the image of the city from its meaningful points of view, changing the collectively recognized city image. A repertoire of models, divided into typologies according to the morphology of the site, is the base for a new theory outlining which parameters (i.e. measure, elevation, slope, and major urban nodes) to use to deform models in each context. The study cases range throughout the history of architecture, focusing on some pre-modern examples such as Laurana's Torricini façade in the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino.

Titian made the first portrait of Paul III in 1543, during the meeting of the Pope and the Emperor Charles V. It had a great success. So Titian was immediately requested for replicas. This paper makes the history of the portrait and the philological point on the original versions and the copies.

In 1933 the archivist and art historian Georg Gronau did a great disservice to Titian’s sensitive portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino —now in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery—when he published an essay that associated it with the wrong image.1 Since then, basing their judgment on an incorrect and unimpressive image, scholars have dis- missed the painting.2 Recently retrieved from the Gallery’s storeroom and subject to new examination, the portrait brings to life the visage of an important player in Italian poli- tics in the mid-sixteenth century.

Tesi di Laurea Triennale in Lettere, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, sede di Milano.
Relatore: prof. Uberto Motta; correlatore: prof. Andrea Canova
La tesi è consultabile presso l'Università Cattolica; in alternativa scrivere a marta.fumi[@]unifr.ch

The realization of the rich drawing collection of the Ambrosiana in Milan goes back to the years of Federico Borromeo, who positively wanted to ensure the institution he had founded with a large number of "book of drawings", the characteristic format such collections were given by the taste of the time. No recollection exists of the original organization of these volumes, on which several drawings were attached. A coherent recognition of documentary sources found both at the Library and at other structures - covering a time-span that goes from the early 17th century to the late 19th century - allowed to retrace the history, as well as most of the original features, of one of the most ancient among such precious books. The collected data seem to bring up the possibility that the former owner - and maybe maker - of the Book was the milanese - though born in Urbino - architect Giovanni Battista Clarici (1542-1602). The drawings included in the Book were taken  after works by several artists from the 16th century, perhaps with the intent of representing the most relevant pictorial schools of the Renaissance. Despite that, a truly milanese character stands out, particularly in a striking series of caricatures inspired by the example of Leonardo, alternated with some outstanding original drawings by the Florentine master.

Ottaviano Ubaldini Della Carda (1423-1498) was a humanist, lover of alchemy and patron of works of art. According to the sources it is possible to partially rebuild the biography of this enigmatic figure who was brother of the Duke Federico da Montefeltro. We know that in 1482, at the death of Duke Federico, there were 900 codexes kept in the library and most of them were scientific-technical tomes. In my paper, I will examine the importance of Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda who was responsible of setting up Federico da Montefeltro’s famous library, maintaining contacts with humanists, and including philosophical, technical, and astronomical works as part of the collection.

The renown of Raphael and Bramante and the key role exercised by Rome in trade and cultural exchanges, as well as in the political interests of the Della Rovere dukes, led to the presence of a growing number of Urbinate artists and craftsmen in the capital from the pontificate of Julius II on. In the early sixteenth century painters and majolica artists from Urbino had played a crucial part in the spread and popularisation of Raphael's inventions, while from the 1540s to the 1550s, it was Michelangelo who became the principal attraction. His presence encouraged the formation of a Group of followers from Casteldurante, one of the most artistically active towns in the Duchy of Urbino. In this way whole family groups, mainly involved in the world of ceramics and bent on more ambitious careers, settled in Rome.  An emblematic case is that of the Picchi family. Before moving their workshop to a very central location at the foot of Trinità di Monti, they had already established relations with Antonio dl Franzese, a member of Michelangelo's household and recipient of some of the most striking Marble works left incomplete by the Master in his house at Macel de’ Corvi.

Stoffe preziose alla corte di Urbino - Schede TE1-TE14, in Il Montefeltro e l’Oriente islamico. Urbino 1430 -1550. Il Palazzo Ducale tra Occidente e Oriente, catalogo della mostra (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, 23 giugno – 30 settembre 2018) a cura di A. Bruschettini, Genova 2018, p. 183 e pp. 186-211

Nel 1968 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin formulò l’ipotesi che Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda (1423-1498) fosse il committente della Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca e che l’opera fosse destinata alla Cappella del Perdono nel Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, che si trovava sotto il patronato di Ottaviano dal 1482. Questo contributo mira ad analizzare le varie interpretazioni relative all’opera di Piero della Francesca in rapporto alla figura di Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda, partendo dall’esame della fortuna critica sul personaggio e dallo studio sulla cultura ermetica rinascimentale urbinate.

The architectural works of Giancarlo de Carlo are intimately linked with his trajectory as a teacher. His projects – built and unbuilt – at the universities of Urbino, Dublin, Pavia and Catania are the most representative of his career. This type of programme permitted him to link his interest in housing with his reflections on the wider region. University buildings offered him the opportunity to combine his structural experiments with the attention that he paid to the historic city, its urban fabric, its materials and its relationship with the landscape. The example of Urbino, where his interventions on behalf of the university stretched over half a century between 1952 and 2001, demonstrates the evolution of his approach to designing places of learning. He also taught in Urbino where the first sessions of the International Laboratories of Architecture and Urban Studies (ILAUD) were held between 1976 and 1981.
The objective of this paper is to show how a synergy gradually emerged between the Marche Region and the teaching that developed there. If the institution of the university is seen in the 1960s as an opportunity to restore life to an economically deprived region, in the late 1970s the spatial qualities and isolation of Urbino are an asset in the attempt to reinvent architectural teaching. The projects realised there by architecture students from a range of countries made it possible to test proposals for expanding the University of Urbino and to initiate a dialogue with the population and the university authorities. Between these two periods came the student movement of 1968, in which Giancarlo de Carlo took the radical position of rejecting the mass university of the sort that was emerging at the time.

Giovanni Santi, nella sua Cronaca Rimata, descrive uno dei personaggi più influenti e meno conosciuti della Urbino del Quattrocento: Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda (1423-1498). Appassionato di materie umanistiche e con uno spiccato interesse per l’astrologia, egli fu protettore emerito di artisti e fratello del duca Federico (anche se per anni la loro parentela è stata oggetto di dibattito). È possibile che il Santi abbia conosciuto Ottaviano durante la decorazione degli appartamenti dell'Ubaldini, al piano terra del Palazzo Ducale, dove il pittore fu impegnato nella realizzazione delle celeberrime Muse.

Antonio Beffa Negrini (1532-1602), one of the first Castiglione’s biographers, states that the Count had written a collection of poems he offered to the Duchess of Urbino, Elisabetta Gonzaga. The six poems were published only in 1760 by Pier Antonio Serassi, who had seen the original manuscript in mons. Luigi
Valenti Gonzaga’s library. Ancient codices ascribe two sonnets to Baldassarre’s cousin Cesare Gonzaga, showing the book offered to Elisabetta was the result of a partnership between the two poets, akin to the eclogue Tirsi (1508). The small collection of poems is studied with regard to the context of lyrical poetry determined in Urbino by Pietro Bembo (1506-1512), and is compared with the contemporaneous writings of Giuliano de’ Medici, who was hosted in that same Court from 1502 to 1512.

This essay explores how, after the death of the prince Federico Ubaldo, the agents involved in the devolution of the Duchy recalled or purposely neglected the events related to the 1517 war of Urbino and to the Medicean occupation. In the legal dispute over the possession of the Della Rovere territories, the Grandukes’ strategy to recall the expropriation of the feud by Pope Leo X proved unsuccessful as the Holy See was willing to avoid any compromising allusion to that precedent. Francesco Maria II in particular tried to celebrate the memory of his ancestor (Francesco Maria I) with a variety of initiatives; his attempts, however, were gradually reversed, starting from the funeral orations to him in his honour. In the meantime, the largest communities of the new ‘Legazione’ marginalized the memory of Della Rovere rule and of the political and military events connected with it. If Urbino completely erased these memories, in Pesaro one finds attempts at downsizing the strife for the Duchy in the early sixteenth century to a local and municipal fact.

This is the text, without illustrations, of a paper published in 'Una Insalata di più erbe'.  A Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin, ed. Jim Harris, Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg, London: The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2011, pp. 38-48.  It proposes that the scene of the Judgement of Paris from the celebrated Netherlandish tapestries of the History of Troy, owned by Federico da Montefeltro, provided a visual source for Raphael's Dream of a Knight, in the National Gallery, London.

To download the text, go on "2 files", then click on "raffaelecaracciolo" link
(per scaricare il testo, vai su "2 files", quindi clicca sul link "raffaele caracciolo").

Il presente lavoro oscilla tra i due poli estremi della straordinaria parabola artistica di Luca Signorelli, in quanto a un primo capitolo incentrato sul tema della formazione e degli esordi, dal tirocinio pierfrancescano fin quasi alle soglie della maturità (lo "Stendardo di Fabriano" a Brera), segue un capitolo dedicato a uno dei filoni più rilevanti e prolifici della produzione signorelliana, quello della "Sacra Conversazione", considerata lungo l'intero arco della carriera del pittore: dalla "Pala Vagnucci" di Perugia, l'opera della primissima maturità, alla "Pala del Calcinaio" di Cortona, un lavoro incompiuto ed ereditato da Francesco Signorelli, nipote, allievo e collaboratore di Luca.

La selezione delle opere su cui concentrare i nostri sforzi è stata effettuata in vista e preparazione della mostra umbra del 2012, considerando fondamentalmente tre fattori: primo, l'occasione unica e irripetibile di vedere riunite e affiancate, in prestito da collezioni italiane e straniere, tutte le opere che la critica passata e recente ha discusso come possibili lavori primo-signorelliani di impronta pierfrancescana; secondo, la necessità di proseguire e approfondire, specie sul versante della ricerca archivistica, i nostri studi (inaugurati dalla tesi di laurea discussa nel 2003 e pubblicati nel 2008) dedicati alla prima opera sicura del catalogo di Luca, la "Pala Vagnucci" di Perugia, che avrebbe costituito il perno centrale e il polo d'attrazione della suddetta mostra, una volta uscita dalla consueta collocazione nel Museo Capitolare del duomo cittadino; infine, il proposito di rivalutare (specie nel loro valore storico e iconografico) alcuni tardi dipinti – ascrivibili alla bottega di Signorelli e realizzati per località minori dell'Umbria – che, sino a oggi, hanno goduto di una fortuna critica pressoché inesistente: come è accaduto anche alla "Pala della Concezione", situata nell'immediata periferia di Cortona, qui prescelta per il fortissimo rapporto che la lega al capolavoro perugino, in quanto dovuta alla committenza della medesima famiglia cortonese.

Dichiarato patrimonio mondiale dell’UNESCO nel 1998, il centro di Urbino ha un’estensione di poco più di un chilometro quadrato: il palazzo voluto da Federico da Montefeltro vi si salda, sorprendendo per forma, funzione e soprattutto dimensioni i visitatori, da Vespasiano da Bisticci che ne apprezza “l’ordine grande et le misure d’ogni cosa” (VESPASIANO DA BISTICCI ed. GRECO 1970, I, p. 382), a Baldassarre Castiglione che lo esalta come “città in forma di palazzo” (CASTIGLIONE ed. QUONDAM 2002, I, p. 14) fino a Michel de Montaigne che, molti decenni più tardi, lo descrive “di tal mole che giunge fino a piè del colle. La vista spazia su mille altri monti vicini” e con “tante stanze quanti sono i giorni dell’anno” (MONTAIGNE ed. CENTO 1972, pp. 244-245).

Il saggio analizza la scrittura del "Giornale di Guerra e di Prigionia" di Carlo Emilio Gadda mettendo in risalto come i nodi concettuali alla base delle opere letterarie dell'Ingegnere siano già presenti in forma atomica nelle note diaristiche; e di come, nella scrittura della prigionia, il momento della giornata (in particolare la sera) condizioni l'autore e influisca sulla forma dei pensieri e della scrittura stessa.