Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
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The Ducal Palace (Italian: Palazzo Ducale) is a Renaissance building in the Italian city of Urbino in the Marche. One of the most important monuments in Italy, it is listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site.
[edit] History
The construction of the Ducal Palace was begun for Duke Federico da Montefeltro around the mid-fifteenth century by the Florentine Maso di Bartolomeo. The new construction included the pre-existing Palace of the Jole. Luciano Laurana, an architect from Dalmatia who had been influenced by Brunelleschi's cloisters in Florence, designed the façade, the famous courtyard and the great entrance staircase. After Laurana's departure from Urbino in 1472, works were continued by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who was mainly responsible for the façade decoration. The portals and the window sculptures were executed by the Milanese Ambrogio Barocci, who was also the decorator of the interior rooms.
After the death of Duke Federico (1482), the construction was left partially unfinished. The second floor was added in the first half of the following century by Girolamo Genga.
The palace continued in use as a government building into the 20th century, housing municipal archives and offices, and public collections of antique inscriptions and sculpture (see Galleria Nazionale delle Marche).
Restorations completed in 1985 have reopened the extensive subterranean network to visitors.
[edit] Overview
Laurana's light and noble arcaded courtyard at Urbino rivals that of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome as the finest of the Renaissance. Overcoming the exigencies of the clifflike site, which made an irregular massing of architecture necessary, from the 1460s onwards Laurana created what contemporaries considered the ideal princely dwelling. In high, plainly stuccoed rooms the richly sculptured doorways, chimneys and friezes created by Domenico Rosselli, Ambrogio Barocci and their workshops stand out.
The beautifully executed intarsia work of the duke's small study (the Studiolo), with trompe-l'oeil shelves and half-open latticework doors displaying symbolic objects representing the arts, is the single most famous example of this Italian craft of inlay.
[edit] Galleria Nazionale delle Marche
The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (National Gallery of the Marche), housed in the palace, is one of the most important collection of Renaissance art in the world. It includes important works by artists such as Melozzo da Forlì, Raphael, Piero della Francesca (with the famous Flagellation), Paolo Uccello, Giovanni Santi, Justus of Ghent (a Last Supper with portraits of the Montefeltro family and the court), Timoteo della Vite, and other fifteenth-century artists, as well as a late Resurrection by Titian.
