Ducal Palace, Urbino

It used to be that I dragged my kids to palaces of all sorts and castles of every ilk to lecture them on the history of the place. By the time we got to the 4th castle in the valley of the Loire et Cher, my kids were rolling their eyes and saying, "Another castle?"

In Granada, wild horses could not drag The Son into the Alhambra, even though I assured him (as a connoisseur of all things castle-y since anything with a turret draws me like a moth to a fire) that the Alhambra was the most beautiful castle in all the world and a marvel of Islamic elegance and architecture.

This trip, conscious that my kids did not share my love of history and castles, I proposed to stay in the ancient house in Tavoleto, reading and blogging by the fire. Whaddaya know?! The Son's teenage hormones kicked in and he fairly dragged us all to the Urbino ducal palace AND he gave us a lecture of the place using Google Translate.

Moral of the story: If you want your teenagers to do something, propose the opposite. I should have done that in Granada. It will always be my great regret that my children never saw the Alhambra for themselves.

Anyway, The Son lead us on a long tour of the ducal palace at Urbino and recounted the fascinating story of Federico da Montefeltro, a true Renaissance man. To the hapless Mother, who has been advised to use the P5 year to groom her gifted son into a Renaissance man (whilst other gifted kids do highly difficult stuff in narrowly 4 subjects in the GEP), I owe an apology.

I now discover the true meaning of a Renaissance man.

Federico da Montefeltro was a condottieri (a military commander) who was also a humanist and interested in both Art and Science. He was a man of impeccable taste whose principled and enlightened lifestyle ensured that his soldiers were intensely loyal and well trained. His army was for hire and he never lost a battle. In other words, a true Renaissance man, was as much at home chopping people to pieces and overseeing the construction of deadly war machines (feats of engineering), as he was designing beautiful palaces and commissioning works of art.

Gulp! I knew that a Renaissance man was good at Science, Humanities and the Arts. What I did not realise was that the same man killed people with ease too!

Anyway, if you ever come to Urbino, do see Federico da Montefeltro's private study. It is lined wall to wall with marquetry work of a quality you will see nowhere else in the world.

This looks like an opened cupboard door in 3D. It is actually marquetry work in 2D, on a flat surface.

The Urbino countryside in marquetry.

Those studs on the ceiling look 3D. They are only 2D, skilfully done using techniques of perspective drawing.

This is Federico da Montefeltro. Readers should note that kink in his nose bridge. Readers will also note (if they research further) that all paintings of this man were done of the left side of his face. The story goes that a lance went through his right eye during a jousting tournament, disfiguring his right side. In order to be able to use his left eye to see everything, he gave instructions to his surgeon to also cut away his nose bridge.