Visible and Invisible Musical Paths in Federico da Montefeltro’s Gubbio Studiolo

The Studiolo commissioned between 1478 and 1482 by Federico da Montefeltro for his palace in Gubbio a few years after that of Urbino, provides us a testimony of exceptional interest in the meanings assigned to music by Federico, both from the institutional and performatif point of view and from the ideal, symbolic and emblematic ones. On the inlaid walls of the small environment, reflecting the real and symbolic courtly ‘landscape’, a refined variation of Federico's celebratory theme as a 'duke musician' exhibited by Marsilio Ficino in his writings, is displayed. The paper propose a reading of the various components of the decorative program, reconstructing the 'iconographic genealogy' of the musical images, referring from the ‘sensitive’ to the ‘intelligible’, along crossed paths (visible and invisible) in which the celebration of 'music' as the foundation of reality and that of the environment’s favorite performances are constantly intertwined, and the images of court music mirror the perfect Harmony that Federico da Montefeltro - 'musician' in the Platonic sense of the term - has achieved in his kingdom.