Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino
Piero della Francesca (about 1415 to 1492) · about 1473 to 1475
Two faces in strict profile look toward each other across a wide, luminous landscape. On the right is Federico da Montefeltro, the mercenary captain who ruled Urbino, in a red cap and red robe, with his famous hooked nose and the warts on his cheek painted without flattery. On the left is his wife Battista Sforza, pale as ivory, with her hair bound in elaborate ribbons and a necklace of pearls. Below them the hills and lakes of their territory stretch away in a haze. Piero della Francesca painted the diptych around 1473, and the two panels can be closed like a book; on the reverse each ruler rides a triumphal chariot accompanied by the virtues.
Federico is shown from the left because he had lost his right eye and part of the bridge of his nose in a tournament. The profile hides the injury and also echoes ancient coins, which is exactly the association a Renaissance prince wanted. Look at the microscopic detail of Battista's jewels and the almost photographic distance in the landscape, painted in the new oil technique that Piero learned from Flemish pictures. Yet the composition is pure geometry: two heads placed at the same height, cut off by the frame, filling the sky like monuments.
Battista died in 1472, shortly after giving birth to the long awaited heir, and her portrait was almost certainly painted from a death mask, which explains her stillness and the whiteness of her skin. The Latin verses on the back praise her as a wife and him as a ruler. The diptych came to Florence in 1631 with the inheritance of Vittoria della Rovere, the last of the Urbino line, who married the Grand Duke of Tuscany. A memorable detail is Federico's cap, painted in a red so intense it seems to hold all the picture's warmth.
Did You Know? Federico always had himself painted from the left because a tournament lance had cost him his right eye and the bridge of his nose.
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