Federico da Montefeltro

Federico da Montefeltro, who lived from 7 June 1422 to 10 September 1482, was one of the most successful mercenary captains, or condottieri, of the Italian Renaissance. He became lord of Urbino in 1444 and ruled the city as its duke from 1474 until his death, and alongside his considerable reputation for martial skill and honor he was known as a humanist intellectual and civic leader. Montefeltro commissioned the construction of a great library at Urbino, believed to have been the largest in Italy after the Vatican's own, complete with a team of scribes working in its scriptorium, and he assembled a large humanist court around himself inside the Ducal Palace of Urbino, a building he commissioned from the architects Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio Martini.