The Renaissance

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

and scholarship. Born in the Umbrian hill
town of Gubbio, an illegitimate son of
Guidantonio da Montefeltro, the Duke of
Spoleto and lord of Urbino, Federigo was
raised in an aristocratic court and knighted
by the Holy Roman Emperor at the age of
fifteen. Soon afterward he became a con-
dottiere, or captain of mercenaries. In 1444
he became the leader of Urbino after the
assassination of his half brother, Oddanto-
nio da Montefeltro. Federigo’s great skill
on the battlefield earned him a reputation
all over Italy; he finally enlisted with the
illustrious Sforza family, the rulers of Mi-
lan, and married a member of the Sforza
clan. In the late 1450s he served Pope Pius
II in the pope’s campaign against Sigis-
mondo Malatesta, defeating Malatesta at
the Battle of Cesano in 1462. Montefeltro’s
loyalty was easily lost, however, as he soon
turned against the pope to wrest control
of the territory forfeited by Malatesta in
the Marches region and the Adriatic port
city of Rimini.


In Urbino, Montefeltro built a large li-
brary in his ducal palace and employed
scribes and scholars. He created the finest
collection of manuscripts in Italy, after that
of the pope. Realizing that the duke made
a much better ally than enemy, Pope Six-
tus arranged the marriage of Giovanni
della Rovere, his nephew, to Federigo’s
daughter, and bestowed the title of duke
on Montefeltro. The pope hired him to
captain the papal forces against the city of
Florence, where Montefeltro allied with
the Pazzi conspirators against the Medici.
The failure of the plot to overthrow the
Medici was a serious blow to the duke as
well as the pope. In 1482, while besieging
the city of Venice, Montefeltro died, leav-
ing the duchy of Urbino to his son
Guidobaldo, a sicklyand ineffective ruler
at whose death the duchy was seized by
the Papacy.


SEEALSO: Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandolfo

Monteverdi, Claudio ........................


(1567–1643)
Composer who pioneered the art of opera,
born in Cremona, Italy. Monteverdi’s first
works were motets and madrigals, com-
pleted when he was still a teenager. He
joined the court of Vincenzo I of Mantua
as a singer and musician, and later was
appointed conductor of the court orches-
tra. He pioneered many innovations in the
writing of music, including the use of in-
strumental accompaniment known as con-
tinuo and the use of monody, a simpler
and clearer melody that would be taken
up by composers of the Baroque period
that followed the Renaissance. Monteverdi
combined vocal music with drama, and
invented opera with the premier of
L ’Orfeoin 1607. This work was the first
to assign musical parts to specific instru-
ments and to convey a dramatic plot with
the use of musical devices and the singing
voice. He wroteThe Vespers of the Blessed
Virginin 1610, a work that began the prac-
tice of repeating melodies for dramatic ef-
fect and to unify the composition. Mon-
teverdi became the conductor of San
Marco Cathedral in Venice in 1613. There
he wrote more books of madrigals and in-
vented new techniques of playing string
instruments, including the tremolo, in
which a note is rapidly repeated or
“shaken,” and pizzicato, in which the mu-
sician plucks the string with his finger. Late
in his life he completedThe Return of Ul-
yssesandThe Coronation of Poppea,awork
based on the life of the Roman emperor
Nero.

More, Sir Thomas ...........................


(1478–1535)
An English statesman, author, and re-
nowned Renaissance humanist who ran

Monteverdi, Claudio

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