painter, engineer, and architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1502)
directed the expansion of the ducal palace at Gubbio, which started in
1476 or shortly thereafter. The new Renaissance palace that emerged
housed the studiolo, which also must have been designed and executed
under Francesco di Giorgio’s supervision. The studiolo, which was proba-
bly used as a small room for study or education, has an irregular ground
plan of about 13.7 m^2 and consists of intarsia wall paneling that originally
extended from a tiled floor to a height of 2.8 m. The intarsia panels create
the illusion of an elegant interior with a trompe l’oeil bench and wall
cupboards containing, among other things, books, musical instruments,
Federico da Montefeltro’s coat of arms, his armor, and, in the central
panel, the Order of the Garter (Figs. 1, 2). A set of panel paintings
attributed to Justus of Ghent (active ca. 1460–80) or Pedro Berruguete
(ca. 1450–1505) depicting the liberal arts is believed to have been mounted
above the intarsia panels (Davies 1955:45–53).^3 Aspectacular gilded and
polychrome painted coffered ceiling had been mounted at 5.3 m high,
supported by an equally rich decorated cornice. A Latin phrase reflecting
Federico’s humanist background appears in carved and gilded letters in the
frieze above the intarsia panels. The Latin text,^4 which very likely refers to
the paintings, reads:480 Wilmering
Figure 1
Studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of
Urbino, from the ducal palace, Gubbio, as dis-
played in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, in the 1950s. The floor, modeled
after the fifteenth-century original (ca. 1477–
83), and the window surround are modern
reconstructions.