Urbino

 Urbino was the last stop on Edward Hutton's tour of Romagna and the Marches. It was not the most beautiful city he had seen but it had a fabled past.

Of Urbino, who can speak as he should or conjure up in words, for the pleasure of him who has not seen it, that dark and gaunt city crouched upon its double hill, never venturing to tower up into the sky, but stooping there gazing over the tangled valleys to S. Marino, to S. Leo, to Pesaro, to the great peaks of the Apennines and to the sea? Bleak and rain-sodden, battered by the wind, burnt by the sun, Urbino seems the last place in Italy to have nourished a court renowned for its grace and courtesy. … 

For, astonishing though it may seem, civilization, the ritual of life—life itself being, as some of those great candid minds of the Renaissance were not slow to observe, a kind of religious service-- was very punctually and strictly observed at Urbino in the sixteenth century.  Here on the hills, in this rain-swept, sun-baked place, the Renaissance in all its liberty, beauty and splendor, was played out in its curious medley of contrasts, almost like a play. The most learned and refined of all the courts of Italy, the court of Urbino gathered to itself all the wit and genius of this imperishable Latin people, filled itself with the finest scholars and the noblest gentlemen of Italy, while its Duke and Duchess lived a life that reads almost like a fairy tale, till Cesare Borgia blasted the place like a lightning flash and nothing was ever really quite the same again…. (276-7)

The Duke and Duchess named by Hutton are Federigo da Montefeltro (1422-1482) and his wife, Battista Sforza both pictured in this famous painting by Piero della Francesca that now hangs in the Uffizi. Federigo was succeeded by his son, Guidobaldo (1472-1508) who though driven out by Cesare Borgia returned to continue the courtly tradition. * (See Note)

Suddenly, almost as suddenly as Cesare Borgia had leapt upon Urbino, Alexander VI died. In a moment Cesare’s magical empire departed from him, and he himself was a fugitive. Guidobaldo returned to Urbino, and… passed the rest of his life among his treasures in the retirement of his court. It was then that the Golden Age began for Italy which in its expression and production has never since been equaled. Every sort of scholar came to Urbino; great poets, painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, doctors, priests, quacks of every kind, fools and nobles, dancing-masters and beautiful women, musicians and preachers flocked to the court of one of the most humane princes Italy had ever seen. It was then that Castiglione wrote his Cortegiano and his life of Guidobaldo; it was then that Santi entertained Piero della Francesca, that Melozzo da Forli came to court, and Luca Signorelli painted his work in San Spirito. … (284)

But who could hope to sum up the riches of this stormy, wind-battered, rain-sodden, sun-baked acropolis? This, at least, should not be forgotten. I mean the church of S. Bernardino. This is a little convent of the Zoccolanti which stands at the end of a dusty road on a hill-top opposite Urbino, from which there is a notable view of the city, but not of the palace. S. Bernardino stands under the cypress-ringed Campo Santo of the Urbanati. It has itself always been a graveyard, and here, in the little cruciform church under its blind, round lantern, a truly Bramantesque dream of a church all in rosy brick, the Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo lie….

Church of San Bernardino**

It was there I took farewell of Urbino, before I set out down the long road for Pesaro, the railway, and home. All that way was pleasantly filled, as I came into the valleys, with great bullock wagons piled up with vast barrels or boxes with the family sitting on top, for it was the time of vintage. The happiness of all that!

At evening, my head full of songs, I came into Pesaro by the Rimini gate, thronged today with bullock-waggons loaded with grapes….and when a few days later I set out for home, it was in the new bubbling wine my health was pledged, and in the new pressed grapes I, too, drank to all my friends. (295)

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Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.

*Note: When he was still young, Federigo, who was destined to attain to so much splendor, was sent as a kind of hostage to Venice. It was while in that city that he came under the influence of Vittorino de' Ramboldoni da Feltre, the learned professor of Mantua. This great man was a Greek scholar of no mean attainment, and his ideal of education soon took possession of the greatest princes in Italy. He taught Greek, Latin, Grammar, Philosophy, Mathematics, Logic, music, and Dancing at the Casa Goija, the "House of Joy," where he had settled in 1425 at the invitation of Gianfrancesco II of Mantua.... such scholars as could not afford to pay him he taught for the "love of God." His pupils included the noblest names in Italy; all the children of the Gonzaga house were educated at Casa Goija, and no doubt met the Duke Federigo in the lecture rooms and the meadows. Later, Duke Federigo placed the great scholars portrait in his palace at Urbino with this inscription: "In honor of his saintly master Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example instructed him in all human excellence, Federigo has set this here."

**Image courtesy of David Orme.