FEDERICO da MONTEFELTRO's BIRTHPLACE

FEDERICO DA MONTEFELTRO'S BIRTHPLACE

The famous Italian Renaissance condottiere, Federico da Montefeltro, was born in 1422
in the small fortified castle of Petroia, up on a hill halfway between Gubbio and Perugia.
(Died in 1482).

                                                                                                       Gubbio
                                                   Castello di Petroia                              
                  Perugia



Federico was born out of wedlock and is promptly adopted by the Lord of Urbino, Guidantonio da Montefeltro.  Many suggestions have been given as to the identity of his birth-mother. One of those is that she was Elizabetta degli Accomandugi, a local Petroia woman with whom Guidantonio had a liaison. Because of new archival material that has surfaced recently, that suggestion has been questioned, and a new theory about the identity of his birth mother offered. (See the Italian blog at versacrumricherche.blogspot.com.) The new theory is that his mother was really Guidantonio's daughter, Aura di Montefeltro, his father the condottiere Bernardino Ubaldini. They, as a couple, are persuaded by Federico's grandfather, Guidantonio, to let him be adopted so that the Lord of Urbino could have a male heir. This second suggestion may mean that Elizabetta degli Accomandugi, who was an attendant to the Duchess, Guidantonio's barren wife, was Federico's wetnurse at Petroia. Since Federico's father's wife remained barren, Federico was adopted by the duchess and educated as one of the noble family members until she died and his adopted father remarried and had a legitimate son. At that point Federico was shunted off to the home of his own future first wife, Gentile Brancaleoni.  He did not become the de facto Duke of Urbino until 1444, when his legitimate half-brother, Oddantonio, was assassinated. This new theory helps to explain why, when Federico himself has a son, he names him not Guidantonio but Guidobaldo, incorporating part of his real father's name into his own son's name.
          The original castle of Federico's birth has been renovated and turned into a luxury hotel, the Relais Castello di Petroia, by an owner who has continued to promote the ducal history of the castle, including the story of the secret liaison with Elizabetta.

13th-century Tower of the Castle of Petroia

View of Mount Cucco from a window in the tower:

Winding road within the castle walls, with 15th-century palace rooms on either side:

Tower of the Castle of Petroia

View towards Perugia from castle terrace:

The 13th century tower still remains from the original site as well as two of the 15th-century
residential structures. Even the Gubbio documents say that Federico was born in the castle at Petroia. The place is so evocative that one can imagine hearing still the childbirth cries of Elisabetta or Aura in the stone rooms on the high hill overlooking the landscape beyond. If Elisabetta is just even his wetnurse, Federico remembers her and pays her homage in later naming one of his children by Battista Sforza after her, Isabetta da Montefeltro, born in 1464.
         It is possible to imagine Federico spending much of his childhood in this isolated place, protected from the outside world and free to roam the woods around the complex to gather knowledge about
the natural history of Umbria.
At age 11 he is swooped off to Venice as a hostage in the wars his birth father was engaged in, so he
soon learns diplomacy in spite of his illegitimacy, a diplomacy that served him well later as Duke.
                The most impressive part of the site of his birth is the 360-degree view of the
surrounding countryside from the top of the tower. To the East is Monte Cucco, with its massive
height and rising countenance just above Gubbio:

To the south a smaller mount

 protecting the road near Assisi:

 To the west hidden beyond valleys and other hills, the large hill-town of Perugia.

It is impossible to stay in this location and not be reminded of the birds'-eye views captured for the Duke by Piero della Francesca in the many paintings he carried out for Federico. In Battista Sforza's portrait by Piero, for example, we see the walled-town of Gubbio, where she died, painted in the year she died, 1472, and perhaps a reference to the Monte Cucco behind her set of pearls. The mountain in the background rising up from her necklace in front appears to turn in space, as if collapsing in on itself, a view that is consistent with a view of Monte Cucco itself from an angle behind it:

 Behind the Duke in his portrait is a lake very reminiscent of nearby Lago di Trasimeno with its islands.

What is most apparent from the spectacular view from the tower, however, is that it gave the young
condottiere a sense of control over the world. From that vantage point, he could imagine leading a
private army from one city-state to another and conquering the hills and valleys, subduing the armed foes he would encounter in his years as a private commander. The knowledge of what the space looks like from above gave him an instant advantage as a controller of troops.  The space he saw from the tower is walkable, manageable, human space, not overwhelming, and although it might hide the larger urban strongholds like Gubbio and Perugia, it is a space that is limited in scope and time and is a space that can be figured out from studying it from above. It is worth mentioning here that cartography as an art is in its initial stages during his lifetime, with the sublime birds'-eye view maps in the Vatican map gallery carried out within a hundred years of Federico's death. (Ignazio Danti, 1580-83). The birds'-eye views of Italy and Umbria from that series here:

Federico's own inclusion of birds'-eye views in his portrait and in other paintings commissioned by him shows his having understood this comprehensive view of the landscape around him. The tower's view may have also contributed to his ability as a condottiere, and though it is is not the only reason for his success, his loyalty to contracts being the prime reason, it is certainly an aid in his defense of other castles and towns. The requirement of a birds'-eye view is rendered beautifully in the way that the landscape from Battista's portrait elides with the background landscape in Federico's own portrait to create a comprehensive image of the world beyond and below them both:

So a visit to Federico's birthplace yields insights into his world, the Umbrian hills and valleys he
ultimately controlled. His own insistence on cutting down the bridge of his nose so that he could see
better with his one eye, after a jousting accident cost him the use of his right eye, speaks of his need
to be able to have a wider view, a need prompted by his early knowledge that if you are born in the right place, you have access to the wider view that allows you to rule the world from above. 

Elisabetta degli Accomandugi

Elisabetta degli Accomandugi

SPERLONGA's TREASURES

SPERLONGA's TREASURES

The Italians have many reasons to keep things secret from tourists. They
have been invaded so often in their history that hiding treasures has become
second nature. What a wonder, then, to discover a location on the coast of
Italy where the magic of mythology and the reality of hard stone meet to
create a treasure that is still open to tourists and Italians alike!
        That is the secret of SPERLONGA. The setting is as dramatic as the
Bay of Naples, but the throngs are missing and the dangers of volcanoes.

Bay of Terracina in daytime and sunset







The place has the head and breast of the Siren
lying as enticement to Ulysses and to modern visitors. One can see from the natural forms
of the land why the area has always had
associations with the voyage of Ulysses from
Greece and why those stories still resonate
today.
      The Roman Emperors knew it was an
evocative place, and in the first century B.C.,
the Emperor Tiberius had a villa built right on
the coast to enjoy something of the view
that still exists. He then had sculptures carved out of marble to remind himself of the stories of
Ulysses and set them inside a cave where
his guests could enjoy cool dining during the
hot summers.

The sculptures were supposedly not discovered until 1957, but the locals must have known their
whereabouts for centuries. A recent museum has been built to house the marbles and visitors can
still visit the cave within walking distance to sense what Tiberius' guests might have enjoyed.
          Above the entrance to the cave was the statue group of Zeus and Ganymede (the youth snatched by Zeus for his beauty; Zeus takes the form of an eagle in this myth).         

 

A copy still stands above the real cave, announcing to the visitor that we are entering the realm of myth and ultimate power. Does the choice of the Ganymede myth suggest Tiberius' sense that he had been snatched by Augustus in his youth to do Augustus' political will?
       Within the cave originally were four other stories from ancient mythology, all having to do with Ulysses:
1) The Taking of the Palladium, the statue of Athena, from Troy, by Ulysses.

The head of Ulysses is carved with deep-set eyes, wonderfully crisp curls, and the sculptors have
emphasized the difference between statue and real man by placing Ulysses' hand splayed out over
the chest of the statue of Athena. Athena herself is stiff and unmoving, with helmet on and almost archaic split eyes, while the hand of Ulysses pulses with life and veins and his face is full of the strain
of carrying the statue's weight while running, as his companion is doing:

The sculptors are familiar with actual anatomy and reveal their knowledge of muscle structure and
tone in the faces and bodies in this group. That they can take hard marble and make the viewer see
the difference between live person carved and statue carved is a remarkable display of their skill.
One critic's reconstruction of how the sculpted groups would have been set in the cave is represented below and on the wall of the museum; in this reimagining, the Taking of the Palladium is on the far right, three figures.                                 
2) The so-called Pasquino group is placed on the far left and may be a representation of Ulysses'
recovery of the body of Achilles after the hero's death in the Trojan War. Very few sections of marble
remain from this group (in far corner of this slide you can see the slumping legs of Achilles).

3) The BLINDING OF POLYPHEMOS - This marble grouping has the largest figure carved in the
entire complex, but few pieces of the Polyphemos and Ulysses statues are intact marble from ancient times. The display in the museum is a 20th-century reconstruction of the arrangement and has plaster casts to fill in the missing areas (much of Ulysses' chest and most of Polyphemos' body and head). While the reconstruction displays an ugly giant with one-eye who is being blinded by Ulysses and his men, it also shows the beautiful body of a naked man. In contrast to his magnificent reclining body, the sculptors placed the smaller figures of Ulysses and his men who are rushing to put a stake through the giant's eye. Their anxious and frantic movements emphasize even more clearly the muscular power of the drunken giant himself. Did Tiberius choose this subject to remind himself of his own lack of foresight when agreeing to Augustus' demands to divorce his first wife? Tiberius would not see himself as Ulysses in this grouping but rather as Polyphemus. His body is greater than the others but he is twice-blind.
From the original marble statues of the men, set to the side of the reconstruction it is possible to see that the muscles on the legs are realistically depicted, the rib-cage shows through the skin, and hair has deep-cut curls. The viewer is overwhelmed by Polyphemos' nakedness and the grandeur of his body and feels less his menace and more the pity that he should be slain.
4) The central grouping and perhaps the most complex and most emotional, though, is the story of
ULYSSES' MEN REPULSING the angry animals of the SIREN (Scylla). The Siren's body is not visible in what remains of the marble pieces but is reimagined on the wall of the museum, a naked woman in the middle of the tumult:
           

We see the prow of the ship, the helmsman (Ulysses) avoiding the glance of the Siren and holding tight to the steering column, while his fellow seamen wrestle with biting wild animals and try to throw off
the weight and crush of the teeth of the wild beings, some of whom appear to be sea snakes:

            

This complex writhing central group is as powerful a description of the forces of the sea as ever was sculpted in marble. And the Siren's story makes sense in the locale where shipwreck would be inevitable in certain conditions in a time before satellite images made it possible to avoid. The damaged marble pieces set together in a tumultuous arrangement speak of the weathering power of the moisture of the sea, too, since it was the group set directly over water in an island in the original cave setting.
Hard not to associate this whirling, gnarling marble group with the emotional tumult in Tiberius' own life.
            Tiberius reigned as Emperor from 14-37 A.D. The villa in Sperlonga was begun much earlier, perhaps as a place for him to escape from Rome and its politics. Could these sculptures date from around 2 A.D.? Tiberius had married the only woman he ever loved, Vipsania Agrippina, in 19 B.C., but was encouraged to divorce her in 11 B.C. and marry Julia, Augustus' daughter, in order to secure his place as Augustus' heir. His marriage to Julia was a disaster, and he never stopped mourning his first wife. The villa in Sperlonga may date then to the days before he became Emperor, before 14 A.D. but after his 11 B.C. divorce from Vipsania. The wanderings of Ulysses would have appealed to him as a story because he never wanted to settle and rule Rome as he should have, in Rome, but instead, never returned to the capital city after 26 A.D., and ended up on the Island of Capri, where he died. Was he hoping, like Ulysses, to eventually regain the love of the woman he had married first? Did he commission the sculpted stories as a reminder that perhaps someday he could go back, after many struggles, as Ulysses did? Did he include the Blinding of Polyphemos to remind himself how far the mighty do fall? We don't know, but what we do know is that he allowed the sculptors to carve their names into the work on the boat in the center of his cave.

 They are the names of the same sculptors who carved the Laocoon, according to Pliny:
             Athenadorus, Hagesandros, and Polydoros

The carving of the mouth open in struggle, the lines of the mustache, the curls set out from the face, the deep-cut eyes
slanted towards the temples in grief, all suggest stylistically that the same sculptors did both major works of art.
 
The similarities in the carving of the figures and the association of the same sculptors' names with both statue groupings state very strongly that the Laocoon group was carved for Tiberius, too. He was in Rome in 2 A.D. and his palace was quite near the location Pliny gave for the Laocoon later, the Gardens of Maecenas.  The Laocoon was not rediscovered and dug up again until 1506, when Michelangelo was present in Rome for the excavation.  The Laocoon was the work of the same sculptors who signed their names on the Siren group and were responsible for the rest of the figures in Sperlonga. These Rhodian-trained sculptors with Greek names were familiar with Greek Hellenistic works and used their consummate skill and memory of the Hellenistic works such as those in Pergamon to decorate Tiberius' homes with mythical texts from Homer and Vergil. The sculptors give powerful voice to the stories from the Odyssey and the Aeneid and create grand entertainment in stone through those stories of strife. If they are the same sculptors in Rome and Sperlonga, they are hired by Tiberius to enhance his palatial settings with literary subjects for conversations about conflict and survival. The Laocoon could have been passed down from Emperor to Emperor from Tiberius to Nero (was it in his Golden House in 64 A.D.?) and from him to Titus (when Pliny mentions it around 78 A.D.), but it seems most likely to have been originally commissioned by Tiberius in a much earlier period (11 B.C. to 14 A.D.?) since the sculptors of Sperlonga are responsible for it.
          That the Emperor Tiberius chose subjects which carry fatal doom within the tales speaks perhaps of the ultimate song of the Siren, the depression of his own personal shipwreck in his own life. That the non-Italian visitor is openly allowed access to the sculptures in Sperlonga now is to witness yet another secret treasure revealed in a proud peninsula of hidden myths. The treasures of Sperlonga enhance our understanding of Roman and Greek history and give us a clearer picture of the artists who produced the Laocoon. In the process these dramatic statues also enhance our understanding of the sensitive struggles of the human condition.

DAVID by MICHELANGELO

DAVID by MICHELANGELO (1501-1504)

When you walk into the Accademia in Florence, the first thing that 

strikes you about Michelangelo's statue of David is how gigantic he is. He is
raised on a 7' pedestal and he himself is 14 feet, 3 inches tall, more than twice lifesize.

He towers over every human being in the space and makes the viewer feel
like David looking at Goliath rather than another human being looking at David.

Not hard to imagine, then, how terrifying the statue was to Florentines when it was first moved in 1504 out of Michelangelo's studio near the Duomo to its location in front of Palazzo Vecchio.(See photo where copy stands today.) He seemed so real and so huge that Florentine youths threw stones at it, as if to subdue him into submission. (Piero Parenti's diary mentions the stone-throwing incident and the youths were taken to court and jail; see Paoletti.) It was a Pygmalion moment, where the artist had made a marble statue seem so real that there was fear David would suddenly come alive and overcome normal-size humans.

 
   

In 1504 no gigantic standing statue had been seen since ancient times, though the block of Carrara marble that Michelangelo used to carve him had been intended for a statue of a "gigante" in previous years. Of course the initial reason Michelangelo made him so large was because the statue was intended for a tribune of the Duomo, very high above the viewer's head and against the sky; the gigantic size would have compensated for the diminishing qualities it would have had in this position. Other artists, such as Donatello, had thought of making figures larger than lifesize, but none of Donatello's large figures have survived as the David has.
        Michelangelo was competing with Donatello in his choice of subject matter and scale, and he was competing with ancient sculptors as well. Donatello had made two statues of David, one in marble (1417), and one in bronze (1430), both of which are smaller than lifesize, two-thirds perhaps.

 

In both of Donatello's Davids, the Biblical hero has already fought the giant and Goliath's head lies between David's feet, the physical evidence of his triumph over the Philistine. The moment Donatello chooses is the moment AFTER the battle. What is emphasized is David's youth and his ability to crush his foe even though just a boy.

 

Part of the slingshot he used to bring down Goliath can be seen in the marble statue next to the stone lodged in Goliath's head. The curving sling lies discarded near his feet in the bronze; he holds a stone, perhaps the stone as trophy, in the left hand of the bronze.

 The sword in the bronze statue is Goliath's own weapon, used against him, once he is knocked out.  
     

Unlike Donatello's hero, Michelangelo's David has no clothes or shoes; he faces the giant with only his slingshot, held in his left crooked arm, and the stone held in his right hand.

 

The rest of the slingshot runs down the back of the figure and follows the curve of the torso so clearly that we understand it is meant to represent a piece of leather into which the stone would have been inserted, swung around, and one end unleashed, to land the blow to Goliath's head:

No head of Goliath appears, here, though, as it does in one other statue of David finished by the Renaissance master Verrocchio in 1475:

             

In Verrocchio's version you can see the wound on Goliath's forehead caused by the stone.
             Michelangelo chooses a different narrative moment to describe in his giant. He portrays the moment BEFORE the battle, when David is summoning up his courage to confront the enemy. To understand what the artist wishes to emphasize here, we only need to remind ourselves of certain sections of the text of the story in the Bible:

1 Samuel 17 King James Version (KJV)

^"3 And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them.

⁴ And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. (about 9 feet tall)

⁵ And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

⁶ And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.

⁷ And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.

⁸ And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.

⁹ If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us."

Goliath is huge and threatens to enslave the Israelites if he can defeat the warrior they put forward. David is the youngest of his brothers and he is taking care of the sheep at home when his father asks him to take food to his relatives fighting on the battlefield. He hears the taunting of Goliath and can't understand why none of the Israelites want to fight the giant. David is brought before Saul, the king, and he tells Saul that when he (David) was guarding his sheep, he had to kill a lion and a bear to defend his flock.

^"36 Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.

³⁷ David said moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee."

Saul gives David permission to confront the giant and offers him a suit of armor to wear as protection

but David takes it off, preferring to go without. He goes in the direction of Goliath who disdains him because he is just a boy. David is brave in his reply to the giant:

^"45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.

⁴⁶ This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

⁴⁷ And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands."

His words are forceful because he believes that armed with nothing but faith, he will prevail. It is the power of those words that Michelangelo desires to convey in his huge, naked man who stands up against the well-armed giant. David knows that inner strength can conquer the largest and best-equipped enemy.

In Michelangelo's version David's head turns to the side as if looking at Goliath on the field of battle. David is naked because without armor. His left leg is in motion as if about to move toward the giant. The tension of confrontation is captured beautifully here in the raised veins of his hand and in the crooked arm and bent leg.

 

 

Unlike Donatello,Michelangelo makes David's head and hands extremely large in proportion to the rest of the body. He wishes to emphasize the ways in which David will defeat the giant, through his brains and his skillful handling of the slingshot. The nakedness is meant to show his vulnerability, since he is no longer the boy-child of the earlier Davids but rather has the pectoral muscles of a 21-year old male; he is a youth, but is not the child of the biblical story. Michelangelo wishes to show his own skill as a carver of marble here, too. He is putting forward in his David a nude athlete who surpasses the nude athletes carved out of marble in ancient times. He is especially aware of the Doryphoros, the Spear-bearer, created by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos in the 5th century B.C., a statue known to all as the CANON, the model for all ideal sculptures:         

Both statues make use of "CONTRAPPOSTO," the balancing of right and left sides.

 
If you draw a vertical line down the center of the body in each, one side is at rest, the other side is in motion. In both the right arm is extended, at rest, and the right leg bears the weight of the figure. The left arms are both bent and the left leg is flexed at the knee in movement in both. The head is turned from the frontal torso to convey naturalness, but it is the tension between the right and left sides that makes the viewer see the statue as alive.
       Polykleitos thought that the proper proportion of body length to head size should be 7 to 1, that is, the measurement of the entire length of the body would be the measurement of seven of the head size. Michelangelo follows that principle, but his body is so much larger than lifesize that he is purposely doubling the canon of the Greek. Instead of the spear that the Doryphoros would have held in his left hand, the weapon of the biblical hero has been reduced to a mere scrap of leather, doubling our awe in his achievement.
         Both statues also show us uncircumcised males, not odd in the Greek athlete, but very odd in a statue of a Jewish hero who confronts the "uncircumcised" Philistine.       

 

David, here, is Michelangelo's own conception of David as an ancient hero-athlete in Renaissance-Christian mode rather than David as an Old Testament Jewish hero-king.

          David is also shown not triumphant, nor unaffected by the battle he is about to enter. His face, as carved by Michelangelo, is riddled with worry:

His large eyes with incised pupils (in the shape of hearts) and his furrowed brow are clearly visible from the side view of the head when one walks to the right and looks up. The deep-cut hair curls contribute to the feeling of anxiety; they reflect the body tensed and curled before action, like many small springs. His David is not a God, though monumental. He is human and afraid of the challenge, but the closed lips and stare imply his determination to carry out the task. His firey spirit will see him through.

 

When visitors come to see him today, they revel in the beauty of the male human body in colossal form; they are nourished by the beauty that Michelangelo has conceived in white marble. But the David he has created astonishes not just because of his size but because of the sense, even now, that he will, in the next moment, come alive and step off the pedestal to fight the giant. The ideal male warrior, being ready to take on a greater adversary, reminds us of the human capacity for triumph over all daily challenges. If he were without spirit, we would not be moved by his apprehension. But in his David Michelangelo gives us a sense that we are all capable of divinity, of being greater than ourselves, of summoning up our inner strengths. Michelangelo knew, as an artist who created divine works, that his own talent tested the limits of human endeavor in every dimension. We look up in awe at David's giant proportions because he reminds us of the colossal nature of the human spirit. That spiritual strength has a giant's physical manifestation. We are inspired by seeing our own potential on full display.