Piero della Francesca, Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza), 1467-72, tempera on panel, 47 x 33 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
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Dr. Beth Harris: [0:04] We’re in the Uffizi, looking at two portraits that were once joined as a diptych, so they would have been connected by a hinge. This is the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:19] She had just died, and this was a commemorative portrait. This is a way that he could remember his wife. We think that it was actually painted by Piero della Francesca, possibly from a death mask that had been made of her.
Dr. Harris: [0:32] Look at how dressed up she is.
Dr. Zucker: [0:33] They’re both very formal.
Dr. Harris: [0:35] It reminds me of the fact that we’re so used to photographs being taken of us from the time we’re very little.
Dr. Zucker: [0:40] It’s true, this was a very privileged thing, and only the extremely wealthy could have an image that could outlast them.
Dr. Harris: [0:47] I’m also reminded that women actually used to pluck their foreheads, because it was considered to be especially beautiful to have a very high forehead.
Dr. Zucker: [0:53] You often see that in Northern painting. It’s important to remember that Federico da Montefeltro actually brought Northern painters, that is Flemish painters, down to his court.
[1:02] In fact, Piero, who is an Italian painter, seems to have borrowed that Northern interest perhaps not only in the high forehead but also in the great intricacy and specificity of the landscape, and we have this wonderful atmospheric perspective.
[1:17] One of the other characteristics that I think is so interesting here is the very strict profile in which both figures are rendered. The formality that you were talking about comes through because of the profile. This is based on coinage from ancient Rome, which, by the way, the humanists of the Montefeltro court and other humanist courts at this time were actively collecting.
[1:38] If you think about a rendering of Caesar, or even on modern coinage, you generally have a perfect profile, and you see that here. The one interesting detail is that the portraits are almost always facing right, and here the duke is facing his wife, facing left.
Dr. Harris: [1:53] Actually, we know that he had suffered wounds on his right side of his face. He was missing an eye.
Dr. Zucker: [1:59] That’s right, and part of his nose was missing.
Dr. Harris: [2:01] So that may have been the other reason why we only see the left side of his face, but there is that formality and power that comes from the profile pose, but also that bird’s-eye view of the landscape so the figures tower over the landscape.
Dr. Zucker: [2:14] There really is symbolism in this painting and there’s actually symbolism outside of this painting as well. You had mentioned this was a diptych. When this painting was closed, you would actually only see the exterior, and the exteriors are painted as well.
Dr. Harris: [2:27] Let’s go have a look.
Dr. Zucker: [2:30] There’s a lot of symbolism on the outside of this painting. Its covers, you could say. You have two triumphal chariots, which is an image that actually comes from ancient Rome as well. On both of them, we can see the people that are portrayed on the inside of the painting.
Dr. Harris: [2:45] Right. On the back of Battista Sforza’s portrait, we see her borne in a triumphal chariot surrounded by figures who represent her virtues, and the same with the duke. Also, below that, we have these inscriptions in Latin.
Dr. Zucker: [3:01] Now, that classical inscription refers specifically to the virtues that are represented on those triumphal chariots. One example of that can be seen on the duke’s chariot, which shows, facing us, sitting but full frontal, a personification of Justice, and you can see that she’s actually holding the scales of justice in her hand, as well as a sword. On the female portrait, the cart is being drawn not by horses, but by unicorns.
Dr. Harris: [3:26] It’s really a fanciful landscape that they’re in as well.
Dr. Zucker: [3:30] There is this real sense of imagination and an attempt to invent a kind of iconography that ennobles the figures represented.
Dr. Harris: [3:37] And we have that typical Piero della Francesca sense of geometry and formality that I think complements the portraits themselves.
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