Enigmatic paintings on the Renaissance theme of the ideal city are currently on view in Urbino, Italy, at the historic Palazzo Ducale, itself a splendid masterwork of 15th-century Italian architecture.
According to Lorenza Mochi Onori, director general of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Marche Region, Italy, the Urbino Renaissance revolved around the figure of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Commander and soldier of fortune, Federico was an expert in the construction of objects and machines.
Duke Federico’s education combined with intellectual curiosity and the meeting in his court with figures such as the polymath Leon Battista Alberti and the painter Piero della Francesca—“all of the theoretical perspective,” as Mochi Onori put it—led to a mathematical Renaissance in Urbino during the second half of the 15th century.
Emblematic of this historical period are three depictions of ideal cities, tempera paintings preserved in Urbino; Baltimore, Md.; and Berlin, Germany. The artists of all three paintings are unknown, so the paintings are referred to by the locations of their current owners: Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin.
While medieval cities were constructed as images of power, domination, and control of the society, the central theme of the Renaissance city is ideal proportion.
