Urbino

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Francesco Paciotti (1520-1590) was one of the most famous military architects of the sixteenth century, building citadels in Turin and Antwerp and consulting all over Europe. Much of his success has not been properly connected to his descent from an illegitimate son of Giovanni della Rovere (d. 1501) and subsequent attainment of patrician status of the Paciotti clan in their native Urbino. The fact that Paciotti could be taken into confidence by allied European leaders – King Philip II of Spain, Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII – was afforded by his ambassador-like status for the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo II della Rovere (1514-1574). This new understanding of Paciotti’s success allows us to discover an order among his works. Far from those of a neutral journeyman, Paciotti’s projects all align diplomatically to Urbino-friendly jobs. The new understanding also, however, raises many new issues of the loftiness of the pursuit of military rather than civil architecture, of the secretive (and therefore largely unpublished) nature of noble-ambassadorial intellectual products, and the weight that should be given to the resulting historical record of texts and prints produced by anxious entrepreneurial authors and artists

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.

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.

A description of a pentagonal spinet of 1540 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The instrument is lavishly but tastefully decorated with intarsia, inlay tracery, and carving, some of the patterns for which derive from the Lombard-Venetian tradition. The life of Eleanora d'Este (1493–1549), for whom the spinet was made, and the intense musical interests of her family are discussed.

Il contributo illustra la presenza del ricordo del dominio mediceo sul ducato di Urbino, risalente a un secolo addietro, nella memoria pubblica degli anni a cavaliere del Seicento. Particolare considerazione è prestata alla prima parte del principato di Francesco Maria II della Rovere, quando si rafforzano le relazioni diplomatiche con Firenze, sino alla nascita dell’erede Federico Ubaldo (1605). L’Encomio della patria di Bernardino Baldi è assunto come maturo esempio di una politica celebrativa di Francesco Maria I che passa attraverso l’erezione di una sua statua, il confezionamento di un codice miniato della Vita redatta da Leoni, e anche la raccolta di scritti biografici e apologetici che lo riguardano nella biblioteca ducale. La vittoriosa lotta contro i Medici diviene così un tassello imprescindibile della ricostruzione epica dell’esistenza del condottiero, ormai libera da ogni animosità verso i discendenti degli antichi nemici. Presto tuttavia la rievocazione di questo passato si farà spinosa con il mutare delle condizioni politiche, prima in vista del matrimonio del giovane Della Rovere con Claudia de’ Medici, quindi nella congiuntura della devoluzione allo Stato pontificio.

The paper elucidates the presence of the recollection of Medici control over the duchy of Urbino, dating back to the previous century, in the public memory at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Particular attention is given to the first part of the reign of Francesco Maria II until the birth of the heir Federico Ubaldo (1605), when diplomatic relations with Florence were strengthened. The Encomio della patria by Bernardino Baldi is considered as a mature example of the celebration of Francesco Maria I, achieved through the erection of a statue of him, the creation of an illuminated manuscript of his Vita written by Leoni, and the collection of biographical and apologetical works about him in the dukes’ library as well. Therefore the victorious battle against the Medici became an essential element in the epic reconstruction of the condottiere’s life, by then free from hostility against the descendants of his ancient enemies. However, before long the celebration of this past became a thorny subject when the political situation changed: first in expectation of the marriage between the young Della Rovere and Claudia de’ Medici, and then during the conjuncture of devolution to the Papal State.

In occasione della recente ripubblicazione in Italia del distopico conte philosophique Il pianeta irritabile (Einaudi, 2014) in questo intervento si traccia una teoria dell’animalità in Volponi, confrontandolo con autori e pensatori del Tardo Novecento italiano come Toni Negri (Lenta ginestra) e Guido Morselli (Dissipatio H. G.), oltre che riconoscendo il richiamo volponiano sulla stessa tematica in un autore recentissimo come Antonio Moresco (specialmente Gli esordi e Canti del caos). Parlare di “animalità” in Volponi mi darà l’opportunità d’individuare lo spazio di un’utopia tutta umana nell’autore (a partire da La macchina mondiale e Le mosche del capitale), di considerare il rapporto tra un’ecologia animale - presente come debito e rilettura politica delle Operette morali e riproposta negli articoli-apologhi a tematica animale scritti per il Corriere – ed un’ecologia umana, deformata e inquinata dalle logiche e strutture iper-capitalistiche – fino alla post-atomica dantesca inabitata piaggia del Pianeta. Se l’animale pare svolgere la funzione di uno spazio supplementare ed utopico all’interno di quella social catena leopardiana, questo sarà ancor più chiaro comparando i romanzi e le poesie volponiane non solo con il Leopardi politico di Negri, anticipatore di una riflessione sul General Intellect post-fordista, ma anche con la vaporizzazione umana di Morselli, dietro la quale quasi impercettibili si avvertono frequenti sguardi animali, e il percorso di formazione e deformazione della specie negli Esordi e di Canti del Caos di Antonio Moresco, nel suo teatro umano esploso, dove dissipazione e disgregazione non escludono un divenire-animale deleuziano (e volponiano) che salva.

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 paper provides new measurements, drawings and photographs of the clavichord on the Urbino intarsia (ca. 1479), including details unpublished until now, together with accurate dimensional measures. This contribution shows how the perspective of the studiolo can be reversed and how the dimensions of the „real‟ clavichord can be determined with a high level of certainty. It is demonstrated that the perspective drawn by Baccio Pontelli in 1479 is perfect: there is no need to postulate neither any distortion of perspective nor the co-existence of different types of perspectives. The author deduces from the new measurements the dimensions of the „real‟ clavichord: outer and inner dimensions, rack, keyboard, bridge, etc. Some dimensions published previously need to be amended. The paper ends with conclusions with respect to organological issues re. the Urbino clavichord: regular fretting 3-4, Pythagorean temperament.

"This article presents a biography of Madonna Gentile of Campofregoso, the illegitimate daughter of Federico of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to whom Alphonso Hordognez dedicated the Italian translation of La Celestina. It also tries to determine when and how the two of them (translator and patron) first met, which circles they moved in, and when the translation was commissioned.

Se traza, en este trabajo, una biografía de Madonna Gentile de Campofregoso, hija ilegítima de Federico de Montefeltro, Duque de Urbino, a quien Alphonso Hordognez dedicó la traducción italiana de La Celestina. También se especula sobre cuándo y cómo los dos se conocieron, en qué ambientes se movieron y cuándo se comisionó la traducción al italiano de la obra maestra española.

Keywords
Gentile Feltria, Alphonso Hordognez, italian translation of La Celestina, Urbino, Rome

Palabras claves
Gentile Feltria, Alphonso Hordognez, traducción italiana de La Celestina, Urbino, Roma
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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.