The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche dedicates an exhibition to the history of the Ducal Palace in Urbino

From April 27 to November 5, 2023, the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche presents the exhibition The Ducal Palace of Urbino. The Fragments and the Whole, curated by Luca Molinari Studio and Luigi Gallo. The exhibition is designed with an approach that is not only scientific, but also strongly contemporary in the visual tools that will be produced, with the intention of reducing the distance between the monument and its audience, transforming the visit to the exhibition into a unique experience.

The exhibition aims to help read the historical density and richness that has been layered throughout the centuries, as well as to grasp its value in the present time.

“Among his other praiseworthy things, in the rugged site of Urbino he built a palace, according to the opinion of many, the most beautiful that can be found in all Italy; and of every opportune thing so well provided it, that not a palace but a city in the form of a palace it seemed to be.” So wrote Baldassarre Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; the richness of the Ducal Palace of Urbino is not only given in fact by its architectural and decorative quality, but also by its being a fragment of the city, a kind of infrastructure that joins Urbino and generates a unique complexity between the private spaces of the Duke and the court, the public places of the city and the landscape towards which it opens.

Despite its central role and an essence as an undisputed masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, the Ducal Palace in Urbino does not have the public attention and understanding it deserves. Hence the idea of a major exhibition in the building that houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, with the aim of letting the general public discover the Ducal Palace, its historical and architectural importance and complexity, not only as a high-quality space housing important works of art, but also as a refined and complex spatial artifact that can engage visitors with the richness of its details and layout.

Conceived in the mid-15th century by Federico da Montefeltro who had already been in power for about ten years, the Ducal Palace soon became the main monument of the city of Urbino and one of the most interesting artistic-architectural examples of the Italian Renaissance. Telling about the building today therefore means relating to its past, but also offering a contemporary reading of it that goes beyond history, proposing it as a complex organism that changes over time. Its is a layered history, which is often not perceived in its richness and is made up of progressive uses and readings of monumental spaces.

“The exhibition curated with Luca Molinari,” says the director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche Luigi Gallo, “focuses precisely on the richness and contemporaneity of this architectural artifact, involving authors of various ages and from different disciplines who reread it in a contemporary key, highlighting the complexity and density of interpretation and use over time and in different ways. The exhibition is the result of a work that has lasted several years and carried out also thanks to the collaboration with institutions of higher education such as the ISIA of Urbino and the Doctorate in Architecture Theory and Design of the University la Sapienza of Rome, which has allowed us to verify punctually the ability to involve this extraordinary palace of ours in the younger generations.”

“The palace is, from its earliest fragments, a rich and dense palimpsest of interventions that have taken place over the centuries up to the present day,” explains co-curator Luca Molinari. “From the first palace commissioned by Count Antonio Montefeltro overlooking the Piazza Grande, to follow the interventions of Guidantonio and Oddantonio, to the final vision of Federico da Montefeltro that leads in a few years to the construction of one of the most important monumental factories of the Italian Renaissance. But what we think of as a definitive image does not correspond to reality because within a few decades the Della Rovere family would build the second floor of the palace, and its interiors would then be dramatically emptied beginning in 1631, with trajectories that would lead the extraordinary patrimony of books and works to move to Florence and Rome. The interior spaces would be inhabited by papal legates, but many parts of it would in time house the judicial prison, the tribunal, the salt and tobacco warehouse, the notarial archives, the Raphael Academy and the book school. Only in the twentieth century did a series of enlightened and attentive superintendents work on the construction of the National Gallery and initiate phases of exhibition and restoration work that have continued to the present day.”

The exhibition will take place in different spaces at the Sopralogge on the second floor.

Along the four sides of the courtyard it will be possible to see the rediscovery of the Ducal Palace through the contemporary gaze and the reinterpretation of its archetypal characters, through different types of analysis: architectural, graphic, typographic and photographic. This section of the exhibition will present:

“The palace as an organism” - the photographic work of ISIA students coordinated by Armin Linke that illustrates the transformations, processes and spaces of the Ducal Palace, by means of a work developed over the past four years;

“The palace as a machine” - illustrations related to ten tiles in the image of those of Francesco di Giorgio, as if they were contemporary graphic posters elaborated by Guido Scarabottolo;

“The Palace and Writing” - the reinterpretation of the typographic elements of the Palace through the project of ISIA students coordinated by Radim Pesko and Jonathan Pierini;

“The Palace and its Elements” - with the ISIA photography course of Professor Paola Binante, a photographic campaign of the architectural/decorative elements of the Palace was developed: interior portals, fireplaces, inhabited windows, door inlays and the doors themselves, floors and vaults.

At the four corners of the courtyard, on the other hand, the exhibition will focus attention on the palace as an archetype of collective architecture: four in-depth discussions with contemporary architects and authors who, together with Luca Molinari, reread some of the palace’s fundamental features. These are four chapters that give the possibility to read the palace in its unity, but from different points of view:

Luca Molinari’s dialogue with the palace, read as a “city in the form of a palace” with an axonometric cutaway;

Franco Purini on the relationship between the parts and the whole, reflecting on the relationship between mathematics/geometry and design;

Sara Marini through the studies of Giancarlo De Carlo reinterpreting the palace as an urban megastructure;

Annalisa Metta on the palace as a landscape form that rereads the relationship between interior and exterior landscape, as well as reading it as a territorial fragment.

For info: www.gallerianazionalemarche.it

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Tickets: 19 euros full, 2 euros reduced, 1 euro reservation fee.

The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche dedicates an exhibition to the history of the Ducal Palace in Urbino

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