URBINO MAUSOLEUM
The Palazzo Ducale in Urbino was planned and begun by Luciano Laurana in 1466-72, including the famous little façade, above left, with two slender towers and Federico da Montefeltro’s private rooms and Studiolo. Laurana left in 1472, when Francesco di Giorgio Martini took over, adding among other things a round tower holding a spiral ramp up from the lower city, above right. Di Giorgio also designed Federico’s palace in Gubbio, with its perfect courtyard, below left, and its own Studiolo, now in the Metropolitan Museum. A single moulded terracotta tile, below right, remains in Gubbio with FE DUX (Federico, Duke) and the flame insignia of the Venetian noble fraternity ‘Gli Infiammati’ to which Federico had belonged as a young man.
On a hill opposite the city, di Giorgio built the church of San Bernardino, above, after Federico’s death in 1482, as a mausoleum for him and his descendants. The austere, simple design, prepared with Federico’s approval and probably with assistance from Donato Bramante, was conceived in part to hold Piero della Francesca’s altarpiece, painted ten years earlier. Federico’s tomb was planned to go under the dome; in 1620, a pair of tombs for him and his son Guidubaldo, in black and white marble, were placed against the side walls. I love the combination now of steel and plywood stacking chairs, baroque floor and tombs, and the chaste, pure lines of di Giorgio’s interior, with its careful lighting and noble inscription in handsome Roman lettering.
Piero’s altarpiece, below, is one of the greatest masterpieces of Milan’s Brera, sharing a room with the equally lovely architecture of Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin. The painting was cut down, like so many, and some believe there was a full dome shown above the group; certainly it must have been hugely enhanced with di Giorgio’s pure architecture around it. In the niche behind the Virgin, from a giant scallop shell, representing pilgrimage and devotion, is suspended by a gold chain, an egg, symbolic of purity and innocence, but too small, I think, to be an ostrich egg, the ostrich being an old Montefeltro emblem. The Duke is shown kneeling, in a fashionable suit of polished armour. Immediately behind him, St Francis holds an exquisite cross of rock crystal set with diamonds and pearls, the perfect luxurious contrast to his rough cassock.
