Duke Frederick began the palace at Urbino in 1454, when he was still
only Count. The architect was Luziano of Lauranna, a Dalmatian; and the
beautiful white limestone, hard as marble, used in the construction, was
brought from the Dalmatian coast. This stone, like the Istrian stone of
Venetian buildings, takes and retains the chisel mark with wonderful
precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must have had the pliancy
of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll or foliage
scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves each cusp and angle of
the most elaborate pattern with the crispness and the sharpness of a
crystal. When wrought by a clever craftsman, its surface has neither the
waxiness of Parian, nor the brittle edge of Carrara marble; and it
resists weather better than marble of the choicest quality. This may be
observed in many monuments of Venice, where the stone has been long
exposed to sea-air. These qualities of the Dalmatian limestone, no less
than its agreeable creamy hue and smooth dull polish, adapt it to
decoration in low relief. The most attractive details in the palace at
Urbino are friezes carved of this material in choice designs of early
Renaissance dignity and grace. One chimney-piece in the Sala degli
Angeli deserves especial comment. A frieze of dancing Cupids, with gilt
hair and wings, their naked bodies left white on a ground of
ultra-marine, is supported by broad flat pilasters. These are engraved
with children holding pots of flowers; roses on one side, carnations on
the other. Above the frieze another pair of angels, one at each end,
hold lighted torches; and the pyramidal cap of the chimney is carved
with two more, flying, and supporting the eagle of the Montefeltri on a
raised medallion. Throughout the palace we notice emblems appropriate to
the Houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere: their arms, three golden
bends upon a field of azure: the Imperial eagle, granted when
Montefeltro was made a fief of the Empire: the Garter of England, worn
by the Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo: the ermine of Naples: the
_ventosa_, or cupping-glass, adopted for a private badge by Frederick:
the golden oak-tree on an azure field of Della Rovere: the palm-tree,
bent beneath a block of stone, with its accompanying motto, _Inclinata
Resurgam_: the cypher, FE DX. Profile medallions of Federigo and
Guidobaldo, wrought in the lowest possible relief, adorn the staircases.
Round the great courtyard runs a frieze of military engines and ensigns,
trophies, machines, and implements of war, alluding to Duke Frederick's
profession of Condottiere. The doorways are enriched with scrolls of
heavy-headed flowers, acanthus foliage, honeysuckles, ivy-berries, birds
and boys and sphinxes, in all the riot of Renaissance fancy.
This profusion of sculptured _rilievo_ is nearly all that remains to
show how rich the palace was in things of beauty. Castiglione, writing
in the reign of Guidobaldo, says that "in the opinion of many it is the
fairest to be found in Italy; and the Duke filled it so well with all
things fitting its magnificence, that it seemed less like a palace than
a city. Not only did he collect articles of common use, vessels of
silver, and trappings for chambers of rare cloths of gold and silk, and
such like furniture, but he added multitudes of bronze and marble
statues, exquisite pictures, and instruments of music of all sorts.
There was nothing but was of the finest and most excellent quality to be
seen there. Moreover, he gathered together at a vast cost a large number
of the best and rarest books in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, all of which
he adorned with gold and silver, esteeming them the chiefest treasure
of his spacious palace." When Cesare Borgia entered Urbino as conqueror
in 1502, he is said to have carried off loot to the value of 150,000
ducats, or perhaps about a quarter of a million sterling. Vespasiano,
the Florentine bookseller, has left us a minute account of the formation
of the famous library of MSS., which he valued at considerably over
30,000 ducats. Yet wandering now through these deserted halls, we seek
in vain for furniture or tapestry or works of art. The books have been
removed to Rome. The pictures are gone, no man knows whither. The plate
has long been melted down. The instruments of music are broken. If
frescoes adorned the corridors, they have been whitewashed; the ladies'
chambers have been stripped of their rich arras. Only here and there we
find a raftered ceiling, painted in fading colours, which, taken with
the stonework of the chimney, and some fragments of inlaid panel-work on
door or window, enables us to reconstruct the former richness of these
princely rooms.
Exception must be made in favour of two apartments between the towers
upon the southern facade. These were apparently the private rooms of the
Duke and Duchess, and they are still approached by a great winding
staircase in one of the _torricini_. Adorned in indestructible or
irremovable materials, they retain some traces of their ancient
splendour. On the first floor, opening on the vaulted loggia, we find a
little chapel encrusted with lovely work in stucco and marble; friezes
of bulls, sphinxes, sea-horses, and foliage; with a low relief of
Madonna and Child in the manner of Mino da Fiesole. Close by is a small
study with inscriptions to the Muses and Apollo. The cabinet connecting
these two cells has a Latin legend, to say that Religion here dwells
near the temple of the liberal arts:
Bina vides parvo discrimine juncta sacella,
Altera pars Musis altera sacra Deo est.
On the floor above, corresponding in position to this apartment, is a
second, of even greater interest, since it was arranged by the Duke
Frederick for his own retreat. The study is panelled in tarsia of
beautiful design and execution. Three of the larger compartments show
Faith, Hope, and Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a
Filippino Lippi. The occupations of the Duke are represented on a
smaller scale by armour, _batons_ of command, scientific instruments,
lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut. The Bible, Homer,
Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus, and Cicero, are lettered; apparently to
indicate his favourite authors. The Duke himself, arrayed in his state
robes, occupies a fourth great panel; and the whole of this elaborate
composition is harmonised by emblems, badges, and occasional devices of
birds, articles of furniture, and so forth. The tarsia, or inlaid wood
of different kinds and colours, is among the best in this kind of art to
be found in Italy, though perhaps it hardly deserves to rank with the
celebrated choir-stalls of Bergamo and Monte Oliveto. Hard by is a
chapel, adorned, like the lower one, with excellent reliefs. The Loggia
to which these rooms have access looks across the Apennines, and down on
what was once a private garden. It is now enclosed and paved for the
exercise of prisoners who are confined in one part of the desecrated
palace!
A portion of the pile is devoted to more worthy purposes; for the
Academy of Raphael here holds its sittings, and preserves a collection
of curiosities and books illustrative of the great painter's life and
works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by
Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's
skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the
fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of
scale which is said to have characterised Mozart and Shelley.
The impression left upon the mind after traversing this palace in its
length and breadth is one of weariness and disappointment. How shall we
reconstruct the long-past life which filled its rooms with sound, the
splendour of its pageants, the thrill of tragedies enacted here? It is
not difficult to crowd its doors and vacant spaces with liveried
servants, slim pages in tight hose, whose well-combed hair escapes from
tiny caps upon their silken shoulders. We may even replace the
tapestries of Troy which hung one hall, and build again the sideboards
with their embossed gilded plate. But are these chambers really those
where Emilia Pia held debate on love with Bembo and Castiglione; where
Bibbiena's witticisms and Fra Serafino's pranks raised smiles on courtly
lips; where Bernardo Accolti, "the Unique," declaimed his verses to
applauding crowds? Is it possible that into yonder hall, where now the
lion of S. Mark looks down alone on staring desolation, strode the
Borgia in all his panoply of war, a gilded glittering dragon, and from
the dais tore the Montefeltri's throne, and from the arras stripped
their ensigns, replacing these with his own Bull and Valentinus Dux?
Here Tasso tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's wedding-feast, and read
"Aminta" to Lucrezia d'Este. Here Guidobaldo listened to the jests and
whispered scandals of the Aretine. Here Titian set his easel up to
paint; here the boy Raphael, cap in hand, took signed and sealed
credentials from his Duchess to the Gonfalonier of Florence. Somewhere
in these huge chambers, the courtiers sat before a torch-lit stage, when
Bibbiena's "Calandria" and Castiglione's "Tirsi," with their miracles of
masques and mummers, whiled the night away. Somewhere, we know not
where, Giuliano de' Medici made love in these bare rooms to that
mysterious mother of ill-fated Cardinal Ippolito; somewhere, in some
darker nook, the bastard Alessandro sprang to his strange-fortuned life
of tyranny and license, which Brutus-Lorenzino cut short with a
traitor's poignard-thrust in Via Larga. How many men, illustrious for
arts and letters, memorable by their virtues or their crimes, have trod
these silent corridors, from the great Pope Julius down to James III.,
self-titled King of England, who tarried here with Clementina Sobieski
through some twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all
this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding
palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy
shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding
emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms.
Death takes a stronger hold on us than bygone life. Therefore, returning
to the vast Throne-room, we animate it with one scene it witnessed on an
April night in 1508. Duke Guidobaldo had died at Fossombrone, repeating
to his friends around his bed these lines of Virgil:
Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo
Cocyti tardaque palus inamabilis unda
Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet.
His body had been carried on the shoulders of servants through those
mountain ways at night, amid the lamentations of gathering multitudes
and the baying of dogs from hill-set farms alarmed by flaring flambeaux.
Now it is laid in state in the great hall. The dais and the throne are
draped in black. The arms and _batons_ of his father hang about the
doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and trophies, with the
banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian eagle, and the cross keys of S.
Peter. The hall itself is vacant, save for the high-reared catafalque of
sable velvet and gold damask, surrounded with wax-candles burning
steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream of people, coming and
going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in crimson hose and doublet
of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on his feet, and his ducal
cap is of black velvet. The mantle of the Garter, made of dark-blue
Alexandrine velvet, hooded with crimson, lined with white silk damask,
and embroidered with the badge, drapes the stiff sleeping form.
It is easier to conjure up the past of this great palace, strolling
round it in free air and twilight; perhaps because the landscape and the
life still moving on the city streets bring its exterior into harmony
with real existence. The southern facade, with its vaulted balconies and
flanking towers, takes the fancy, fascinates the eye, and lends itself
as a fit stage for puppets of the musing mind. Once more imagination
plants trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware upon the pavement
where the garden of the Duchess lay--the pavement paced in these bad
days by convicts in grey canvas jackets--that pavement where Monsignor
Bembo courted "dear dead women" with Platonic phrase, smothering the
Menta of his natural man in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of
Mount Hymettus. In yonder _loggia_, lifted above the garden and the
court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath the
coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, he fingering his
dagger under the dark velvet doublet, she playing with a clove
carnation, deep as her own shame. The man is Giannandrea,
broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke Guidobaldo's favourite and
carpet-count. The lady is Madonna Maria, daughter of Rome's Prefect,
widow of Venanzio Varano, whom the Borgia strangled. On their discourse
a tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's boldness--Camerino's
Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart charms. And more will
follow, when that lady's brother, furious Francesco Maria della Rovere,
shall stab the bravo in torch-litten palace rooms with twenty poignard
strokes twixt waist and throat, and their Pandarus shall be sent down to
his account by a varlet's _coltellata_ through the midriff. Imagination
shifts the scene, and shows in that same _loggia_ Rome's warlike Pope,
attended by his cardinals and all Urbino's chivalry. The snowy beard of
Julius flows down upon his breast, where jewels clasp the crimson
mantle, as in Raphael's picture. His eyes are bright with wine; for he
has come to gaze on sunset from the banquet-chamber, and to watch the
line of lamps which soon will leap along that palace cornice in his
honour. Behind him lies Bologna humbled. The Pope returns, a conqueror,
to Rome. Yet once again imagination is at work. A gaunt, bald man,
close-habited in Spanish black, his spare, fine features carved in
purest ivory, leans from that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he
tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand.
This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young
wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of
petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a
second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by
forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of
boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of the Church
reverts Urbino's lordship, and even now he meditates the terms of
devolution. Jesuits cluster in the rooms behind, with comfort for the
ducal soul and calculations for the interests of Holy See.
A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should be taken in the
crypt of the cathedral, where Francesco Maria II., the last Duke, buried
his only son and all his temporal hopes. The place is scarcely solemn.
Its dreary _barocco_ emblems mar the dignity of death. A bulky _Pieta_
by Gian Bologna, with Madonna's face unfinished, towers up and crowds
the narrow cell. Religion has evanished from this late Renaissance art,
nor has the after-glow of Guido Reni's hectic piety yet overflushed it.
Chilled by the stifling humid sense of an extinct race here entombed in
its last representative, we gladly emerge from the sepulchral vault into
the air of day.
Filippo Visconti, with a smile on his handsome face, is waiting for us
at the inn. His horses, sleek, well-fed, and rested, toss their heads
impatiently. We take our seats in the carriage, open wide beneath a
sparkling sky, whirl past the palace and its ghost-like recollections,
and are half way on the road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and whirr
of wheels before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There is just
time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand bare-headed to
salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along the sky. Then the open
road invites us with its varied scenery and movement. From the shadowy
past we drive into the world of human things, for ever changefully
unchanged, unrestfully the same. This interchange between dead memories
and present life is the delight of travel.