The Della Rovere Castles in the Unpublished Drawings by Girolamo Cialdieri: The Muzio Oddi Album from the University of St Andrews

Within the archival collection of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, manuscript 38654 is catalogued as an “album of drawings and manuscript material from the circle of Muzio Oddi: Central and Northern Italy, circa 1595-1640”. This compilation includes drawings, sketches, and several written reports, mostly focusing on fortifications across Italy and Europe. The association with the Urbino-born architect and engineer – whose theoretical and practical work remains only partially studied – makes this collection an invaluable document for research and scholarly inquiry. The drawings, in particular, constitute a corpus of significant interest due to their variety of content – offering a research horizon with multiple perspectives – and the possibility of new attributions, both in terms of authorship and subject matter. Oddi’s experience and proclivity for collecting explain the heterogeneous nature of this extensive sampling, from which a specific group of sheets depicting castles in the Marche region has been selected. Upon careful examination, these were identified as preparatory studies created in 1632 by the painter Girolamo Cialdieri on behalf of the Barberini family, in the aftermath of the transfer of the Della Rovere State to the Papal States.