The Studioli in Urbino and Gubbio

The Studioli in Urbino and Gubbio: Setting the Stage for the Illustrious Men, the Montefeltro, and the Liberal Arts

The art of the plan underlying the summer and winter apartments in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, which Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio created for Federico da Montefeltro, determined the purpose of the studioli and chapels at their heart. A rediscovered late fifteenth-century inventory sheds light on the function and interaction of the winter apartment’s studiolo with other aspects of the palazzo, such as the altar in the ducal salotto and the books in the library. Changes in the duke’s life impacted the use of his rooms, morphed pre-existent programs, and changed expectations regarding the pursuit of verisimilitude and the use of oil as a paint medium. In the process, Giusto da Guanto passed the ducal brush to another painter – perhaps a Spanish master by the name of Pedro, although not an inhabitant of the palazzo, a frequenter of its top-floor servant quarters, and arguably identifiable with Pedro Berruguete – who finished the studiolo’s Illustrious Men. They can now be reconsidered against the background of their built environment, as can the second painter’s Liberal Arts and the Discourse that new evidence confirms were installed in the studiolo in the Montefeltro Palazzo in Gubbio; an installation that in the wake of new evidence for the windows of the room can now be reconstructed and seen to have probably comprised also an image of Philosophy.

Machtelt Brüggen Israëls specialises in early Italian Renaissance art. She teaches at the University of Amsterdam and is research curator of Italian painting at the city’s Rijksmuseum. She was a visiting professor at the University of Florence, where she continues to be a member of the doctoral college. She was fellow at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti, for which she co-authored and edited a volume on Sassetta’s Borgo San Sepolcro altarpiece and, with Carl Brandon Strehlke, the catalogue of the European paintings in the Berenson Collection. Her monograph on Piero della Francesca was published in 2020 by Reaktion Books and the exhibition on the artist’s Augustinian Altarpiece that she co-curated with Nathaniel Silver was on view at Milan’s Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Spring 2024. She is currently writing a book on the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.

Organised by Professor Susie Nash, The Courtauld, as a joint event between the Northern Renaissance Workshop seminar and the Italian Renaissance Seminar, and generously supported by Sam Fogg.