The wait is now running out: next May 30, 2025 it will reopen it Study by Federico da Montefeltro, at the Ducal Palace of Urbino. The closure took place on November 4, since the environment was to be interested «From Refunctionalization interventions d
He plants that reflect our desire to offer an increasingly accessible ducal palace, able to respond to the modern needs of the museography and to excite the visitor who arrives in Urbino “ the director of the National Gallery of the Marche had said, Luigi Gallo.
On Friday 30 May at 16.00 the presentation of the delicate, as complex – but at times spectacular – intervention that took place in recent months, followed at 17.00 by the actual inauguration, is scheduled. Both moments will take place in the presence, in addition to the museum management and the city authorities of the Urbinati, of the general manager of the museums of the Ministry of Culture, Massimo Osanna.
«PNRR funding made it possible to face the necessary renewal of the museum plants that were obsolete – says the director Rooster – On this occasion, also given the considerable involvement of the structure, an accurate operation of restoration and study of the building was carried out, as well as in complete rearrangement of the works. This operation is progressively involving 
All spaces: first the eastern wing, with theJole apartmentthen the western one, with the rooms called “Of the guests” And now theDuke apartment with famous Study To then end with the remaining environments. A complex action put in place to improve the museum standards of the National Gallery of the Marche region and which, at the same time, hides an accurate work of investigation, study and restoration of the palace and the collections “.
Historical-artistic notes on the study. The Study It is the most intimate environment of Federico da Montefeltro’s apartment and at the same time the most R
application of his public figure of the Duke. It is a place of study and individual meditation whose type has its centuries -old roots in medieval monasteries. With the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classic world by humanists, the realization of these collected spaces was loaded with further meanings related to the care of the spirit in the hours left free from daily work.
On the access door on the side of the Hearing room had introduced itself to Study From the dynastic portrait of Federico and his son Guidubaldo of the Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete.
The skilled glimpse from below and the extraordinary realism of painting merge to give life to the public figure of the Lord of Urbino, depicted intent on reading but dressed in the armor that had made him great among the lords of Italy. The painter had put the prestigious awards received in the summer of 1474 by Ferdinando d’Aragona king of Naples, and by Edoardo IV of England: the collar of the Armellino and the garter, repeated also in the tarsie.
Traditionally, the conclusion of the decoration of the Study It is set at 1476, a date written in the celebratory band below the ceiling. This and the Tarsie were made in Florence by the brothers Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, while the paintings of 
28 illustrious personalities from the Greco-Roman world and the Middle Ages, with significant presences of contemporary characters (the beloved master Vittorino da Feltre, his friend Bessarione, Pope Sixtus IV), were entrusted, in Urbino, to the Fiammingo Giusto di Gand and then completed by Berruguite himself. The location on two levels separates the men of the church at the bottom (with the addition of the Christian poets Dante and Petrarca), from the lay people up. Federico owned the writings in his library of all of them.
Further down, the tarsie depict scansie on the shelves of which they are scattered – in apparent disorder – weapons, books and parchments, musical and mathematical instruments, even the chess pawns, the theological virtues (Hope, faith and charity) and Federico himself. Under them, in a band divided into pane, there are the personal heraldic companies of the Duke, who translate his moral qualities into a system of symbols. This manifesto of the culture of the Lord of Urbino is combined with a refined taste for the witty game, which transforms reality. The realism of painted fabrics and jewels and the illusion of the prospect of the tarsie produce in the observer the immersion in a space where nothing is as it seems.
In 1631, with the death of Francesco Maria II of the Rovere, the Duchy of Urbino returned to the Church: it was then that Cardinal Antonio Barberini, passionate about art, had the paintings of the Study by Uncle Pope Urban VIII. The large tables were torn from the walls, sawd in individual squares and transferred to Rome in its collection; They then passed in the family one, where they remained until 1812.
In 1861, 14 portraits were purchased by Napoleon III for the nascent Musée Napoleon, the future Louvre, where they currently find themselves. The portraits left in Italy were purchased by the State in 1934 and intended for the National Gallery of the Marche.
Conservative interventions over the centuries. The conservative story of the tarsie reports minimal changes to its elements, with few certain data relating to the rearrangement of the room by Cardinal Legato Pasquale Badia, of an intervention from November 1883, of the subsequent dismantling by Pasquale Rotondi, in 1939, during the safety of the historical-artists assets from the damage of the war, and the restoration of the period 1969-72 performed in Bologna by Otello Caprara, the last in order of time before the current one. To date there are no information, graphic or documentary memories on Study which testifies to his state within time from 1632 to 1852-53.
In relation to the ceiling, even less is known: beyond some exploitation of the coloring of the carvings, still very visible on the entire surface, the only restoration documented today is that performed in 1969-72 by Silvestro Castellani, who noted that previously it had never been the subject of disassembly.
The last restoration. The tarsie of Study And the chest of drawers in recent months have been dismantled and hospitalized in the temporary deposits of the museum to allow also in this area of the building, the works of electric and fire -fighting systems. All the panels have been subjected to anxic treatment in combination to the application of anti -tank products, like the paintings on the table that will be reigned in the apartment of the Duke and the inlaid doors of the rooms, just as the paintings of the fourteen illustrious men were treated, the subject of a revision of the conservative state and maintenance interventions.
The new set -up. The new setting up of the Study Del Duca, one of the most suggestive places of the museum path of the National Gallery of the Marche region, will treasure the long studies relating to its primitive realization and the events that have characterized the almost 550 years of existence within a sumptuous residence, up to the current desire to bring the reading the most similar to the original, even if different elements are no longer available.
First of all, it should be considered that tarsie, paintings and wooden carving were merged into the study, made both in Florence and in Urbino, in the first half of the seventies of the fifteenth century. Therefore, the re -seal proposal had to take into account the partial loss of the paintings caused by the Barberininian removal of 1632 and the changes that the room suffered, especially in the upper part, from 1632 to the late seventies of the last century.
From the most recent studies, and less, one has therefore started to reconsider globally Study: The substantial difference, compared to the proposal of Rotondi, is that now we refer to a reconstructive proposal of the set-room to a mixed complex of architecture and painting, in which a non-secondary role had to play carpentry (for Rotondi only pictorial) that connected the inlaid space with the pictorial one and with the cod ceiling.
To simplify, a complex space was imagined that kept in account similar structures used for the construction of polyptychs and ‘ancient’ altar machines, currents in Italy of the third quarter of the fifteenth century. In this perspective, the new lighting proposal must also be read, which aims to return to the room an atmosphere of the ambient to enhance all the components, with the addition of some localized points.
Carlo Franza