ART HISTORY ROAD TRIP VI: URBINO, IDEAL CITY?

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

– Italo Calvino, ‘Invisible Cities’, 1972

During the Italian Renaissance there was renewed interest in classical texts and Plato’s ‘Republic’, in which he described his ‘ideal city’, was widely studied. It was a primer for any aspiring Prince or Duke who sought to improve the lot of their citizens and as Italy was made up of a myriad of small city states it was to prove very popular.

In truth very few of these rulers made much progress philosophically but they had some success architecturally, creating ideal cities in bricks and mortar that we still admire today. The little Duchy of Urbino was one of the more impressive. The architect of the Ducal palace, with its bravura setting clinging to a precipitous hillside, was Luciano Laurana  a ‘Schiavone’ or Slav from the part of the Venetian Republic that is now Croatia. He is also the most likely of several candidates in the frame as the artist who painted the Ideal City, hanging today in the Galleria Nazionale della Marche in Urbino.

The picture has an uncompromising look to it. Architects are quite partial to the idea that cities, even ideal ones, work best without people cluttering up the space. The broad empty piazza and dark, featureless windows have a ‘28 Days Later’ air about them.

Painted on a large panel of unconventional aspect ratio, it is the best known of three similar imaginary townscapes. One Is now in the Walters Gallery in Baltimore and another in Berlin’s Gemaldegalerie. The central motif of the Baltimore version is a trio of buildings loosely based on iconic classical examples; the Colosseum, the arch of Septimus Severus and the Baptistry in Florence. Unlike its two companions this city has some inhabitants, albeit only a handful of sparsely distributed figures. 

The diminutive humans are important though because, in a country of city states, this was an attempt to illustrate what a perfect city state might look like. For the cittadini these three precise mathematical inventions offer a new understanding of the world and how to represent it accurately in two dimensions. That at least one of them may have been created in Urbino by the architect of its most celebrated building demonstrated the value of knowledge at the time, it was the new currency of the Renaissance, and Federico di Montefeltro made sure his court welcomed and nurtured these virtues.

The Ducal court at Urbino continued to dazzle even after the death of Federico, producing two stellar artistic talents, Raphael Sanzio and Donato Bramante. There is also another famous painting that bears the name of the city, painted in the 1530’s in the years of the ‘high’ Renaissance by Titian; The Venus of Urbino.

This mysterious reclining nude figure, which would inspire so many other similar works  in years to come, was based on a picture Titian had collaborated on with his mentor Giorgione, the Sleeping Venus. 

Giorgione died in 1510 leaving the picture unfinished and Titian completed the job. Many years later he borrowed the pose for the Venus of Urbino. There are many suggestions as to who the young woman might be but what we know for sure is that it was still in Titian’s studio when the young Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo came to have his portrait painted. He was clearly captivated by the unabashed directness of the picture, the naked Venus staring directly out at the viewer. The picture has lost its power to shock now but there’s no doubt it has been considered shocking for most of its existence. Looking at it with modern sensibilities it’s odd to discover Mark Twain describe it as ‘the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses’.

Guidobaldo had no qualms, he negotiated its purchase and the picture became known as the Venus of Urbino in respect of its new owner and its new home.

Sadly it left the city when, a century later, the last in the line of the Ducal family, Vitoria della Rovere, married Ferdinando II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and much of the art collection of Urbino found its way to Florence where Venus remains today, in the Uffizi.

As consolation there are still two works by Titian in the Ducal Palace at Urbino. They were painted on the front and back of a ceremonial banner and were later separated from their original support and given a new canvas backing.

Originally on the front of the banner, The Resurrection, reminds us that Titian was working during the dizzy heyday of Mannerism. The brilliant Venetian palette with its intensely blue sky and vivid sunset are terrific but the soldiers’ contorted gesture of surprise and the slightly camp figure of Christ floating away are less successful. We are able to see that the soles of his feet are nice and clean but what is the staff of the flag he is holding resting on?

On the back of the banner Titian painted a depiction of the Last Supper. We have to assume that the subject and the shape and size of the banner were not of Titian’s choosing as almost every version of this subject at the time conformed to the compositional model we are so familiar with from Leonardo’s fresco. The disciples are seated along one side of a table with Jesus in the center in a horizontal framing. Titian had to fill a vertical space however and pulled it off brilliantly by throwing in another innovation; viewing the scene diagonally. This squashes the figures together allowing him to foreshorten the table, leaving room above the diners heads for a bit of architecture, seen through the loggia.

The next morning we set off for home, a straightforward cruise north west along the old A1 Autostrada del Sole. The traffic was sparse and as we whizzed past the exits for legendary city states we debated their individual strengths and weaknesses. Ravenna, Bologna, Ferrara, Parma, Mantua and Verona.

By the time we left the autostrada at Modena Nord our next trip was beginning to take shape.

Fold of the Week: The Inert Cloth

The inert cloth is not suspended, although here it transitions from lying on a surface to dropping over the table’s edge and incorporating different folds. In this other example, of Sant’Agata in Carcere, the fabric moves from suspended folds, into inert folds as it lands on the floor. 

The inert cloth creates a sense of stillness and calm. Unlike dynamic folds that convey motion or action, inert folds are softer and less dramatic.  By incorporating them alongside more active, swirling drapery, artists created visual contrast. The interplay between stillness and motion added depth and balance to the composition. 

Overall, inert cloth folds were a subtle yet powerful tool to convey mood, highlight form, and balance the visual dynamics of Renaissance compositions.

Fiona