Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico de Montefeltro

For the reconstruction of the Urbino room, that by Luciano Cheles, published in 1968, is adopted; that more recent, based on precise measurements, light direction, and provenance of art work, is dismissed in a note (162, n. 70). The title's promised originality originates in the author's assumption that the Gubbio room was constructed to provide Duke Guidobaldo with "training in the verbal arts" (48, n. 11), the objects of the intarsia and paintings serving as a memory guide, while also promoting instruction in mathematics. In support is the passage, "This research confirms Olga Raggio's suggestion 'that the [Gubbio] studiolo itself may have been conceived for Guidobaldo in order to stress the importance that a liberal arts curriculum was to have in his education"' (51, n. 44); while elsewhere it is asserted that: "In previous studies of the studioli, the subject of memory and its influence on the late quattrocento mind (and architecture) does not appear as a topic or as an indexical term for cross-reference".