The erstwhile Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), Warlord and patron to the painter Piero della Francesca, suffered various scars in his military career; among these a few that, already while he was still a young man, affected his visual ability. Here, we present these historical details—including portraits of the Duke at two different stages in his life—to obtain insight into his vision, that is, what his visual capabilities were, which visual cues he most relied on, and the strategies he devised to improve this residual vision. Specifically, the evidence suggests that the Duke was willing to sacrifice his facial appearance for the sake of improved vision, ie that he had his nose surgically altered to enlarge his field of view. It also served him in his role as a horse-mounted military leader, and in some aspects may have enhanced some of his depth cues beyond the capacity of a person endowed with normal vision. We finally show how Piero della Francesca, in his masterful 1465–66 profile portrait of Federico, gives us an intuitive but uncannily personal glimpse of the way in which the Duke of Urbino looked out onto the world.
van Tonder, G., Zavagno, D., Sakurai, K., Ono, H. (2012). The vision of Federico da Montefeltro. In 35th European Conference on Visual Perception Alghero, Italy. 2–6 September 2012 (pp.73-73). Pion.
The vision of Federico da Montefeltro
ZAVAGNO, DANIELE;
2012
Abstract
The erstwhile Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), Warlord and patron to the painter Piero della Francesca, suffered various scars in his military career; among these a few that, already while he was still a young man, affected his visual ability. Here, we present these historical details—including portraits of the Duke at two different stages in his life—to obtain insight into his vision, that is, what his visual capabilities were, which visual cues he most relied on, and the strategies he devised to improve this residual vision. Specifically, the evidence suggests that the Duke was willing to sacrifice his facial appearance for the sake of improved vision, ie that he had his nose surgically altered to enlarge his field of view. It also served him in his role as a horse-mounted military leader, and in some aspects may have enhanced some of his depth cues beyond the capacity of a person endowed with normal vision. We finally show how Piero della Francesca, in his masterful 1465–66 profile portrait of Federico, gives us an intuitive but uncannily personal glimpse of the way in which the Duke of Urbino looked out onto the world.
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