Ideal City with a Fountain and Statues of the Virtues

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Painted by Fra Carnavale, this oil on wood exemplifies all the characteristics of the High Southern Renaissance. It was painted in 1500 C.E., and during this time, Michelangelo was feverishly chipping David out from his prison on marble, and Raphael was painting the famous frescoes in the Signature Room of the Vatican. Renaissance fever was high, and this type of art would become legendary to later generations. This image (commissioned by Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino) depicts an “ideal” city with geometric buildings, tiny people, and calm weather. The buildings on either end seem to frame the central action of a woman getting water from a fountain. The first and most blatantly obvious detail is the extraordinary use of linear perspective. The buildings in the foreground lead the viewer’s eye back into the center of the image which depicts three proportional buildings. The orthogonals (diagonal lines receding into space) meet at the vanishing point in the central barrel vault of the Roman triumphal arch. This highly mathematical way of depicting space was a hallmark of the Renaissance; artists wanted to take the reason and logic from the Greeks and apply them to their own paintings. 

       I am also struck by the green, cool surface of the courtyard. It looks like the Romanesque and Gothic marble encrustacean that usually adorned the facades of Italian Cathedrals. However, here the decoration has been flattened out and applied geometrically to a wide open space. Finally, this painting is essentially propaganda for the “perfect,” ideal, and unachievable city. Of course Florence, Siena, and  Rome never looked like this; the image of the woman drawing water from an overflowing fountain was meant to suggest the abundance and wealth of a faultless city. According to my art history book, “a woman draws water from a splendid community well, evidence of the ruler’s generosity in providing fresh water for the citizens.” (pg.582). This quote exemplifies the role of the Medici, Gonzaga, and Montefeltro family’s during the Renaissance. They were patrons of the arts, brought unfathomable wealthy and status to their city, and expected the mass of citizens to appreciate the rising middle/upper middle class. Overall, this city is beautiful but unreal with humans vastly dwarfed by the charity of the ruler (i.e. her domineering buildings). This is what the Greeks and later Italian Renaissance moguls hoped to achieve: perfection.