ABSTRACT
Carl Laubin stands in a tradition which goes back to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoed Allegories of Good Government and of Bad Government (1338-40), in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Expressing a political ideal of peace or good government, these include a cityscape with its spatial organisation in its natural environment. These were followed by three paintings of the 1490s showing ideal, modern, classical cities by an anonymous artist of the 1490s in the circle of Piero della Francesca, perhaps Luciano Laurana, architect of the Palazzo Ducale at Urbino. With their combination of poetry and accuracy, these paintings include one which is a true capriccio because it features real buildings, the Colosseum as well as versions of the Arch of Constantine and the Baptistery in Florence, transposed to an imaginary setting. Laubin has himself responded to one of these paintings, in his work of 2007, Verismo (on which see below).
