The “Art of war frieze” in Urbino: a blend of virtual reconstruction and scientific accuracy

The Art of War Frieze was commissioned by Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to decorate the back of the «wing façade» of the Ducal palace. The Frieze decorated the façade from the time it was realised towards the end of the XVth century until 1756. The Frieze consists of a very particular series of seventy-two limestone bas-reliefs, whose iconographic repertoire represents numerous war and building machines as well as military and political symbols. After it broke away from the outdoor façade it was stored in different rooms in the Palace but despite the many documentary records available, the question of the original sequence of the basreliefs has never been resolved. The primary scope of this paper is to create a “virtual” reconstruction of the original sequence of the bas-reliefs, starting from historical and iconographic records, an analysis of the back and the individual panels using a laser scanner and fully automatic open source photo modelling technologies like the Arc3d, and photogrammetric systems like Image Master together with analyses of the state of conservation, type of degradation correlated to atmospheric parameters (sunlight, temperature, rain). Tests will then be carried out with different systems in order to confirm the accuracy of the model if it is decided to reproduce the individual panels using the rapid prototyping technique associated to a study of the execution techniques.