Today we visited Urbino, a medieval walled town some distance away from Assisi in the Marche region of Italy. Sadly, it was a day of rain so, though there were some lovely views as we crossed the Apennines for the second time, it was hard to see them through the rain and drifting clouds.
The town of Urbino retains much of its medieval appearance. We walked round part of the walls at first, and looked down on the many streets that are far too narrow for cars.
The town is built on two hills, and the streets vary between being steep and being very steep. Some are so steep they are more like ladders.
This one is actually called a ladder - Scalette di S. Giovanni! We asked our guide how women with pushchairs managed; she said she had had twins and used a twin pushchair, so she soon had very well developed arm muscles!
We visited the Oratorio de San Giuseppe - St Joseph to you and me. The members of the confraternity of St Joseph helped the families of people who had been executed, but delivered this help while wearing long dark robes with pointed hoods and face coverings with just two eye holes. This was to conceal their identity but it must have been extremely worrying to open your door to somebody who appeared to have dyed their ku klux klan robes black by mistake.
The chapel is rather too Baroque for my taste, but it does have an altar built to house a copy of a painting by Raphael, who was born in Urbino, though he left as a young man.
The nice thing about this oratorio is the room that has been decorated with stucco to look like a cave which contains a life size representation, also in stucco, of the Nativity.
The shepherds and Mary are looking at the baby, as are the cow and the donkey, and poor St Joseph looks about to collapse with exhaustion.
Another room in the Oratory has a portrait of Charles Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender. He lived in exile in Urbino for a couple of years shortly after the failed 1715 rebellion, and was a member of the confraternity.
Close by is another oratorio, that of San Giovanni Battista - St John the Baptist. This was very much more to my taste. It has a stunning late Gothic style fresco cycle of 1416, painted by 2 brothers called Lorenzo and Jacobo Salimbeni, of whom I had never previously heard. The subjects include 2 Madonnas, one by each brother, and a Crucifixion.
This scene is so full of characters and there is so much to see. The artists have included not only the agony of some of the onlookers but the indifference of others, and has also put in such details as two naughty little boys fighting at the foot of the cross, a dog washing itself in the left corner, and an angry mother trying to prevent her child approaching the dog.
The whole of the right hand wall has scenes from the life of John the Baptist.
I could have sat and stared at these for ages, they are all so full of life and detail, but it was time to press on to the Ducal Palace, which houses a great many masterpieces.
The Ducal Palace was built for the Duke Frederico da Montefeltro in the mid 15th century. The Duke is the chap with the impossibly hooked nose in the famous portrait by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi in Florence. The Duke’s nose such a strange shape because he lost his right eye and the bridge of his nose following an injury in a tournament.
It’s a typical renaissance palace. This is the interior courtyard
It’s apparently built on the remains of an earlier palace, but I couldn’t see any remains of anything earlier.
There are so many masterpieces in the Palace it would be ridiculous to include them all here. There’s a very beautiful Madonna by Giovanni Bellini, but it was impossible to photograph because of the very bright light shining directly onto it.
There’s a very famous Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca but I don’t like it very much. I far preferred his Madonna.
I’m afraid I didn’t quite manage to eliminate the reflection of a light nearby, so there are a couple of bright spots on it which don’t belong.
There’s a masterpiece by Raphael, dated about 1505, called La Muta, which I didn’t really like either. She looks so miserable, but that’s possibly because she has just become a widow.
I much preferred another by Raphael called St Catherine, but it was completely impossible to photograph because of the reflections from the light on the glass covering it. Raphael being one of my favourite painters,I did manage a photo of tapestries copied from his cartoons, but they haven’t come out well enough to appreciate.
There are a couple of paintings by Titian, one is this Last Supper
As usual, I have managed to photograph it squint. I think it comes from trying to take the photo quickly and get out of the way, though I suspect it might not be much better however long I took. I probably need a tripod!
There’s a painting by Paolo Uccello called The Miracle of the Desecrated Host but it’s in 6 scenes, it’s 10 or 12 feet long, I didn’t understand it but I think it might well be anti-Semitic, so I’m not posting it here.
The palace also featured some rooms personal to the Duke, like one called the Studiolo, a small study for contemplation. Its walls are completely covered in wood, with inlays so that various scenes are represented. This is one I particularly liked.
It’s hard to believe this isn’t painted or carved, the base looks so 3 dimensional. It’s entirely created from wooden inlays of different colours.
There is also a room, not very large, where Charles Edward Stuart, The Old Pretender, lived while he was in exile in Urbino. And there are a couple of garden areas, one where we sat and ate a sandwich after we had spent a couple of hours in the place. We had hoped to find time to visit Raphael's house, but we had so little time to eat and visit the bookshop that it was soon time to go.
After we left Urbino, we returned to Assisi in time to look into Basilica Santa Ciara, which we had missed through lack of time when doing our tour of Assisi. It’s the Basilica that was built for St Clare after she died in 1253, and her body was brought down from San Damiano which we visited a few days ago. The Basilica is a bit of a strange shape.
It’s built into another church which you can see on the right, and Roy says he thinks the enormous buttresses on the left were probably built to balance that.
No photos are allowed, but I just took some quietly without flash. This is the miraculous crucifix that spoke to St Francis, which is left in a special room at the side of the church.
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This is painted in the very early style, when Christ on the cross is depicted as triumphing over death, rather than dying like a criminal. The church itself has one in a slightly later style, where He where is is shown as suffering, with a drooping head and twisted body.
We went down to the crypt to view Clare’s body and her ragged robes which have been kept for nearly 800 years, but there were so many devout people praying down there that I didn’t like to take photos.
We walked back up the hill to our hotel, it being almost 6, so I could write all this up. Tomorrow we go to Perugia and Lake Trasimeno, and out to a special dinner, so I don’t know when I’ll get time to post anything.
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