Urbino
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| + | [[Image:Venus (Titian).jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Venus of Urbino|Venus of Urbino]]'' (1538, detail) by [[Titian]]. The frankness of Venus' [[facial expression|expression]] is often noted; she makes direct [[eye contact]] with the [[viewer]]]] | ||
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| + | '''Urbino''' is a walled city in the [[Marche]] region in [[Italy]], south-west of [[Pesaro]], a [[World Heritage Site]] notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent [[Renaissance]] culture, especially under the patronage of [[Federico da Montefeltro]], duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482. The town, nestled on a high sloping hillside, retains much of its picturesque medieval aspect, only slightly marred by the large car parks below the town. It hosts the [[University of Urbino]], founded in 1506, and is the seat of the [[Archbishop of Urbino]] (see below)<!--please don't set this apart as a separate orphan-->. Its best-known architectural piece is the [[Palazzo Ducale, Urbino|Palazzo Ducale]], rebuilt by Luciano Laurana. | ||
| - | :''[[grotesque art]]'' | + | [[Guidobaldo II della Rovere]], Duke of Urbino, commissioned the [[Venus of Urbino]] painting. |
| - | In art, '''grotesques''' are a decorative form of [[arabesque]]s with interlaced garlands and strange animal figures. Such designs were fashionable in ancient [[Rome]], as frescoed wall decoration, floor mosaics, etc., and were decried by [[Vitruvius]] (ca. 30 BCE), who in dismissing them as meaningless and illogical, offered quite a good description: "reeds are substituted for columns fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes take the place of pediments, candelabra support representations of shrines, and on top of their roofs grow slender stalks and volutes with human figures senselessly seated upon them." When Nero's [[Domus Aurea]] was inadvertently rediscovered in the late fifteenth century, buried in fifteen hundred years of fill, so that the rooms had the aspect of underground [[grotto]]es, the Roman wall decorations in fresco and delicate [[stucco]] were a revelation; they were introduced by [[Raphael Sanzio]] and his team of decorative painters, who developed ''grottesche'' into a complete system of ornament in the Loggias that are part of the series of [[Raphael's Rooms]] in the [[Vatican Palace]], Rome. "The decorations astonished and charmed a generation of artists that was familiar with the grammar of the [[classical orders]] but had not guessed till then that in their private houses the Romans had often disregarded those rules and had adopted instead a more fanciful and informal style that was all lightness, elegance and grace." In these grotesque decorations a tablet or candelabrum might provide a focus; frames were extended into scrolls that formed part of the surrounding designs as a kind of scaffold, as [[Peter Ward-Jackson]] noted. Light scrolling grotesques could be ordered by confining them within the framing of a pilaster to give them more structure. [[Giovanni da Udine]] took up the theme of grotesques in decorating the [[Villa Madama]], the most influential of the new Roman villas. | + | |
| - | Through [[engraving]]s the grotesque mode of surface ornament passed into the European artistic repertory of the sixteenth century, from Spain to Poland. Soon ''grottesche'' appeared in [[marquetry]] (fine woodwork), in [[maiolica]] produced above all at [[Urbino]] from the late 1520s, then in book illustration and in other decorative uses. At [[Château de Fontainebleau|Fontainebleau]] [[Rosso Fiorentino]] and his team enriched the vocabulary of grotesques by combining them with the decorative form of [[strapwork]], the portrayal of leather straps in plaster or wood moldings, which forms an element in grotesques. By extension backwards in time, in modern terminology for medieval [[illuminated manuscript]]s, [[drolleries]], half-human thumbnail vignettes drawn in the margins, are also called "grotesques". | ||
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| - | In contemporary illustration art, the "grotesque" figures, in the ordinary conversational sense, commonly appear in the genre ''grotesque art'', also known as [[fantastic art]]. | ||
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| - | == See also == | ||
| - | *''[[Comic Grotesque]]'' | ||
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Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region in Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482. The town, nestled on a high sloping hillside, retains much of its picturesque medieval aspect, only slightly marred by the large car parks below the town. It hosts the University of Urbino, founded in 1506, and is the seat of the Archbishop of Urbino (see below). Its best-known architectural piece is the Palazzo Ducale, rebuilt by Luciano Laurana.
Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, commissioned the Venus of Urbino painting.
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