After days of rain in Le Marche, I was getting soggy. No walking outdoors without a drench.
So we decided to head out for a 2.5 hr. drive from our resting place to Urbino. It’s this long a drive only because no route is direct: first you go south towards the Adriatic shore, then up north again.
The Duke's Nose
I wanted to visit Urbino mostly because it’s home to one of the most famous noses in all of art history: the nose belonging to the Duke of Urbino, Federico III of Montefeltro.
The Duke of Montefeltro, painted by the master, Piero della Francesco, is always recognizable. Who could forget that face?
Federico III da Montefeltro, of the famous nose, was a highly successful condottiere (mercenary
soldier captain). Condottieri were the leaders of professional military companies contracted by
the Italian city-states and the Papacy from the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance. The Pope himself made Federico Duke of Urbino, the area then being part of the Papal States.
Urbane Urbino: The Ducal Palace
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Ducal Palace Courtyard, Urbino
This impressive palace was "the" place to be invited during the Renaissance. Federico had a fabulous court and invited many illustrious people to it.The Ducal palace and the legacy of Federico’s famous court were further developed by his son Guidobaldo, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, another small but famous Italian court known for its excellence in both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court at Urbino further increased its cultural clout and patronage. It's because of folks like them, and their rich patronage, that we |
have masterpiece portraits of secular figures recurring throughout the Renaissance.
A visit to Ducal Palace is a pleasure. It’s arcaded internal courtyard is a center of calm. A masterpiece of proportion and light, it was the first of its kind in Italy, then copied in countless other Renaissance palaces Inside, the stately harmony of well-constructed space continues. But the palace is more barren than I expected (hey, no one lives there anymore). It still houses a fine assortment of paintings, now mounted on free-standing easels near the walls rather than where they would have been seen. It's now clearly a museum (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche).
The Grand Stairway of the Palace (described by Vasari as the most beautiful of its time) has very wide and easily rising steps, with inset stone banisters for support. The proportions of each of the open palace rooms are impressive but not intimidating. The inside of the palace is pretty bare, as I’ve said, and the walls whitewashed as a museum for some of the finest art pieces collected by the Duke.
Some original decorations of the Palace remain as they were, including its magnificent fireplaces and stucco-decorated ceilings. Duke Federico's
studiolo is a magnificent little room decorated with portraits of philosophers and with with trompe l'oeil woodwork intarsia. Many examples of amazing intarsia are found in doors of the palace. Much of the decorative relief around fireplaces and ceilings depicts exploding grenades, one of the first Duke’s favourite military attack techniques.
The Renaissance Paintings
I was a bit peeved that some works I most wanted to see were temporarily removed, including some by Piero della Francesca. But I did get to see his work, La Citta Ideal, a somewhat surrealistic work showing buildings in perspective with open doors but no people. And there was Rafael’s haunting portrait of that melancholy lovely woman called La Muta. And some surprises: I found a small religious work I liked and had never seen: very touchingly done by Giovanni Santi, Rafael’s lesser known artistic father.
Urbino was home to Rafael, who grew up amidst the Duke’s wonderful court. His lesser-known father was an admired poet and court painter of religious themes during Federico’s reign. But it was Rafael who would hit the one-name-only status of instantly recognizable celebrity. Even though he was orphaned at age 11, growing up in this urbane environment gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari as inherent in the Renaissance artist.
The Invention of "Cool"
This was the place to be in the high renaissance. Most of those invited to the Ducal Palace had
already made it in terms of the reigning standard of celebrity. You had to keep up and hold your
own in a company of scholars, artists, poets, nobles and courtier-politicos of the time -- all of whom (in contrast to our own populist celebrity mania) were expected to have educated minds
and not merely strident opinions.
This was also a moment in history when being an Artist was elevated to an exalted status in the social hierarchy., so long as he (most likely) adhered to the model of humanistic refinement. It was a time of great strides in Western scholarship: in mathematics and science as well as investigations of ancient writings. There were great bursts in contemporary literary, visual, and musical arts.
As well, there was a style of conducting oneself, the art of social conduct and conversation. Innovation was encouraged, but no grunge need apply. The model of "casual elegance" or "cooly knowledgeable" reigned. The Italian word for it was "sprezzatura".
Urbino’s courtly life was to become set for centuries as the model of Italian humanist virtues. This was largely due to a tell-all book by one of the guests at the Duke's Palace: Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier (1528).
Castiglione’s
The Book of the Courtier became required reading for centuries for all who aspired
to a life of power. Many of those same people would also have exchanged succulent bits of gossip
as they shared wines and foods worth imagining. How better to promote court intrigues for
those versed in the writings of Castiglione’s more notorious contemporary,
Machiavelli?
Sprezzatura
If it's too evident, it's not sprezzatura. It’s a style that results from a well-educated background
and a well-practiced sociability. It refers to something like an artful spontaneity or nonchalance in appearance and knowledge: an apparently effortless mastery and naturalness at the same time. The trick is that, IF it's visible, it turns into its dreadful opposite: affectation.
The term was coined by Castiglione, who advises: avoid affectation in every way possible . . .
and … practice in all things a certain Sprezzatura [nonchalance], so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it."
This concept, has been around the block.
Cicero recommended a studied nonchalance as one style
of oration and rhetorical persuasion. It also appears, I think, in these quotes across nations
It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
--Willa Cather
A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
For me, some the best written examples of it occur in the essays and lectures of that engaging
American, Mark Twain. Or in the style of an
Arthur Ashe playing tennis in contrast to, say, a Jimmy
Connors.
This is a meal to last the entire night and perhaps into the dawn. An evening not only rich conversation, but one enriched also by music and poetry. And the food! Remember, tomatoes, corn, and potatoes were New World staples that hadn’t yet made it big in Europe. But garden produce like cabbage, fava beans, peas, chick peas, squash, cauliflower, cabbage elderberry, fennel, eggplants would have been likely ingredients.
This is a privileged banquet, let’s remember, not common fare. So the spectacle of presentation is as important as the substance offered. Dishes had to please the eye as well as the palate. Not only soup to nuts, but several different seasonal varieties of dish comprised each course. Exotic innovations as well as regionally fresh ingredients made this a renaissance feast. Spices, herbs, and olive oil would be used to flavor and cream, cheese and other sauces would be used to the chef’s skill to enhance, not to cover, the main food used. A telling point in how expensive the meal was in how fresh the ingredients had to be (only the rich could afford to use the freshest meat and sauces made of cheese
or egg that might soon go bad).
Trays of candied fruit and aperitif wines might be brought in as the guests waited to be seated. The rich soups, both sweet and savoury, were served. Sugar was used as a seasoning for main dishes as well as desserts.Clear broths might be served as well, to cleanse one’s taste or prepare for the next dish. Pastas would have been served, of course in all their many varieties -- and you can’t know how many until you travel around Italy! But not in tomato sauces until this New World import became more evident in European markets. An assortment of roasted pheasants or other game birds might be lavishly presented with relishes of cherries, plums raisins, truffles, or capers, citron, olives, anchovy and other wonderful concoctions, as well as roast meats, stews, sausages and mincemeats, followed by elaborate salads that could also contain cooked vegetables and poultry, liver, or giblets ,eggs prepared in different ways, an assortment of fish (salted, dried, and fresh) dishes, some with broth or aspic. And let’s not forget the side dishes, often made with pastry or as tartes and flavored, for example, with quince, elder flowers, rice, roses, honey, or chestnuts. Then the cheeses. Leave a bit o of room for the sweet pastries and other sweets, made into fritters, almond paste cookies, and sugared apples, lemons pears, custards, cheescake, flavored ices,. And don’t forget the many different wines served along with each course. Alas, coffee would not have been served until centuries when Venetians introduced the imported raw beans to Italy in the 1600s.
For those serious enough to follow through on this, you can consult the recipes, ingredients, and
instructions offered by a cookbook published in Italy during the late 15th and early 16th centuries:
The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, Martino of Como, edited and with an
introduction by Luigi Ballerni, translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen [University of California
Press:Berkeley CA]. Or
click here for a site that adapts a somewhat less sumptuous menu to modern
diet and budget. Marino's innovations rest upon mixing new and old. and even way back then he
advises that using local goods (freshness) is often synonymous with quality.
Present-Day Urbino
Walking the streets of historic Urbino in the present-day, surrounded by university students dressed in the universal denim chi, you still can’t help thinking to the Renaissance. It’s all around you in
the harmonious architecture, the spatial plan with everything fitting into place. I wonder how this
more people looking under than over the age of 30. The primary economy of Urbino now is based
on its university, established in the1500s. The students far outnumber the non-student residents here,
The city has many good eateries, lots of bookshops, some interesting 'ethnic' clothing, and of
