Urbino-Monterchi-Sansepolcro

Next morning we ate a pretty lackluster breakfast before boarding the bus and heading about an hour to Urbino. Our first stop was the (unheated) Ducal Palace. It’s now a museum, holding quite a number of artworks that really don’t necessarily have anything to do with Urbino. A few that do, however, are Raphael’s La Muta and a really tiny painting of St. Catherine. Raphael was born in Urbino, you see, and his father was a court painter for the duke, Federico da Montefeltro. More interesting was Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation and Madonna of Senigallia. Two other works I had studied in slides were also to be found there: Luciano Laurana’a View of an Ideal City, possibly done from a drawing by Bramante, and a portrait of Federico and his son Guidobaldo by Pedro Berruguete. The other (really, really) interesting item there was the study of Federico da Montefeltro, paneled in illusionistic wood intarsia with virtues, a portrait of the duke, still life objects, and landscapes. I can’t imagine how many people and how much time it must have taken to finish that room.
After leaving the ducal palace, we hiked up one of Urbino’s steep hills to Raphael’s House, now a museum which still possesses much of the original furniture. It was really interesting. We saw the room where Raphael was born which has a little fresco the people like to say is an early Raphael. We also saw the grindstone where his father powdered his pigments. The house was on three levels, with a fourth area connected by a little courtyard on the second level which was overlooked by a balcony. Raphael’s father must have done quite well.
We then quickly ducked into two oratories, admiring frescoes in one and sculpted stucco in the other, before going to lunch. My friend Meg and I followed Helen (who always knows the best area restaurants) to a little place called the Fornarina, in honor of Raphael, and ate with Helen, Collette, another student named Claire, and the bus driver. It was pretty interesting since almost all of the conversation was in Italian. Obviously, my language skills are basic enough that I mostly listened but I was still able to understand quite a lot. One rather funny cultural clash occurred. As it was bitterly cold outdoors, Meg ordered hot tea to go with her pasta. The bus driver whipped around with the most dramatically shocked look on his face and exclaimed, “Tea?! With pasta?” and went on to say that tea was only good for 4 o’clock. After this, I had to order it, too. After the waiter had left he was mumbling drinks that would have, in his eyes, been more appropriate for a lunch, ending his list with water. I shrugged and said, “È fatto con l’aqua,” to which he was only able to smile while the rest of us, Americans, laughed. I ordered some sort of egg pasta with porcini mushrooms and had a piece of torta della nonna, a lightly lemon-flavored creamy tart with pine nuts on top. It was all very good.
Piling back on the bus, we drove over 2 hours to the little town of Monterchi where we got off the bus just long enough to see Piero della Francesca’s rather strange Madanna del Parto, which presents us with an image of the expectant Virgin.
We then drove about 15 minutes to Sansepolcro, Piero’s hometown, where we quickly went into the Cathedral to see a Resurrection altarpiece influential on one of Piero’s most famous works. We then saw this piece, also a Resurrection, at the Civic Museum. It was so powerful: the look Christ fixes you with seems to sum up the entire Passion. We also saw his Madonna of Mercy altarpiece and two fragmentary frescoes, one of St. Julian, the other of St. Louis of Toulouse. There was also a rather interesting display of old, intricate keys and locks. After stopping at a café, it was time to head back to Florence, a trip that took us over 2 hours, lengthened by an unexpected detour due to road construction. It had been so bitterly cold in the mountains that it felt positively balmy when I stepped off the bus!