Paola Uccello completes his last major commission in 1469, the predella for the altar of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament at Urbino, for which Joos van Ghent provides the main panel.

Uccello also executes many careful drawings of objects rendered in perspective.

Despite his genius, however, he will die poor and neglected on December 10, 1475.

Francesco de Giorgio Martini, the renowned Sienese painter, sculptor, and architect, comes to Urbino in 1470 to work as an architect on the cathedral here.

Melozzo da Forli, a brilliant painter known for his mastery of illusionism in ceiling and wall painting, works from 1465 to 1475 in Urbino (where he may have come into contact with Piero della Francesca, a strong influence on his style).

At Urbino, Melozzo is one of the decorators of the “Studiolo” in the ducal palace.

Francesco Laurana, while executing sculptures for the court of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, models at least some of the nine surviving portrait busts of women that represent perhaps his finest work.

His bust of Battista Sforza, duchess of Urbino, executed in about 1475, typifies his highly individual style, which owes more to the stylized elegance of Byzantine art than to the work of contemporary Florentine masters such as Donatello.

A master portraitist, Francesco has a remarkable ability to simplify forms into almost abstract geometrical patterns.

Renowned Sienese painter, sculptor, and architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini paints his striking “Nativity” around 1475, while working as an architect in Urbino.

He draws up his multivolume Trattato di Architectura civile e militare, a rich amalgam of precepts and illustrations that anticipates many of the developments of the following century.

Although it will never be published, it will circulate widely in manuscript copy, and duplicates of many of Martini's drawings will appear in books published many years after his death.)

Justus van Gent, also known as Joos van Ghent or Joos van Wassenhove, had (according to documents) been admitted to the Antwerp Painters' Guild in 1460 and, four years later, was painting in Ghent, where he had become friends with Hugo van der Goes (whom he may have taught).

Sometime after 1465, Joos had gone to Italy, where he is employed by the great art patron Frederigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, a very successful condottiere, a skillful diplomat and an enthusiastic patron of art and literature.

Vespasian, a Florentine bookseller who contributes much to form the antiquarian taste of Frederick of Montefeltro, states that this duke had sent to the Netherlands for a capable artist to paint a series of ancient worthies for a library recently erected in the palace of Urbino.

It has been conjectured that the author of these twenty-eight portraits of "Famous Men," which are still in existence at the Louvre and in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche at Urbino, was Justus van Gent.

As a composer and draftsman, Giusto, as he is known in Italy, compares unfavorably with the better-known painters of Flanders; though his portraits are good, his ideal figures are not remarkable for subtlety of character and expression.

Joos's work at Urbino reflects the influence of Netherlandish masters van der Weyden and Bouts but without the typical Flemish concern for realistic detail.

His “Communion of the Apostles,” painted in about 1472-74, typifies his eclectic style, in which an Italianate feeling for monumentality and spatial harmony coexists with Flemish precision and clarity.

Joos dies in his mid-forties around 1476.

At Montefeltro’s court, Piero della Francesca writes on the science of perspective, Francesco di Giorgio Martini writes his Trattato di architettura ("Treatise on Architecture") and Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, writes his poetical account of the chief artists of his time.

Federico's brilliant court, according to the descriptions in Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano ("The Book of the Courtier"), sets standards of what is to characterize a modern European "gentleman" for centuries to come.

Papal vicar Cesare Borgia, ruthlessly consolidating his control over the Romagna in 1502, arrests and executes enemies who have conspired against him.

In June, he sets out for Marche, where he is able to capture Urbino and …

Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, suffering from pellagra dies in Fossombrone at the age of thirty-six.

He is succeeded by Francesco Maria della Rovere

Guidobaldo, born in Gubbio, had succeeded his father Federico da Montefeltro as Duke in 1482.

Guidobaldo had married Elisabetta Gonzaga, the sister of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua.

Guidobaldo was impotent, and they had no children, but Elisabetta had refused to divorce him.

He had fought as one of Pope Alexander VI's captains alongside the French troops of King Charles VIII of France during the latter's invasion of southern Italy; later, he had been hired by the Republic of Venice against Charles.

In 1496, while fighting for the Pope near Bracciano, Guidobaldo had been taken prisoner by the Orsini and the Vitelli, being freed the following year.

Guidobaldo had been forced to flee Urbino in 1502 to escape the armies of Cesare Borgia, but had returned after the death of Cesare Borgia's father, Pope Alexander VI, in 1503.

He has adopted Francesco Maria della Rovere, his sister's child and nephew of pope Julius II, thus uniting the seigniory of Senigallia with Urbino.

He had aided pope Julius II in reconquering the Romagna.

The court of Urbino is at this time one of the most refined and elegant in Italy.

Many men of letters meet here.

The Italo-English historian Polydore Vergil may have worked in the service of Guidobaldo and Elisabetta as well as Baldassare Castiglione, the author of the book Il Cortigiano, which describes the court of Urbino.

Baldassare Castiglione, with Francesco Maria della Rovere, had taken part in Pope Julius II's expedition against Venice, an episode in the Italian Wars: for this he had received the title of Conte di Novilara, a fief near Pesaro.

Francesco Maria having succeeded as duke of Urbino at Guidobaldo's death, Castiglione remains at his court.

Castiglione writes about his works and of those of other guests in letters to other princes, maintaining an activity very near to diplomacy, though in a literary form, as in his correspondence with Ludovico da Canossa.

He had been born into an illustrious Lombard family at Casatico, near Mantua, where his family had constructed an impressive palazzo.

The signoria (lordship) of Casatico (today part of the commune of Marcaria) had been assigned to an ancestor, one Baldasar da Castiglione, a friend of Ludovico II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1445.

The later Baldassare is related to Ludovico through his mother, Luigia Gonzaga.

In 1494, at the age of sixteen, Castiglione had begun his humanist studies in Milan, which will eventually inform his future writings.

However, in 1499, after the death of his father, Castiglione had left his studies and Milan to succeed his father as the head of their noble family.

Soon his duties seem to have included representative offices for the Gonzaga court; for instance, he accompanied his marquis for the Royal entry at Milan of Louis XII.

For the Gonzaga he had traveled quite often; during one of his missions to Rome, he had met Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, and in 1504 a reluctant Francesco Gonzaga had allowed him to leave and take up residence in that court.

Urbino is at this time the most refined and elegant among Italian courts, a meeting point of culture ably directed and managed by duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga and her sister-in-law Maria Emilia Pia.

The most constant guests include: Pietro Bembo, Giuliano de' Medici, Cardinal Bibbiena, Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso, and Cesare Gonzaga, a cousin of both Castiglione and the duke.

The hosts and guests organize intellectual competitions which result n an interesting, stimulating cultural life producing brilliant literary activity.

In 1506, he had written (and played in) a pastoral play, his eclogue Tirsi, in which allusively, through the figures of three shepherds, he depicts the court of Urbino.

The work contains echoes of both ancient and contemporary poetry, recalling Poliziano and Sannazzaro as well as Virgil.

Jewish communities thrive in central Italy in the sixteenth century in Urbino, …