Audience hall - Wooden furnishings

The walls of the audience hall beneath the frescoes are decorated with astonishing wooden furnishings completed at the end of the 15th century by the Florentine woodcutter Domenico del Tasso. Nevertheless, the real masterpieces are the bench (or tribunal) and the pulpit whose outsides are carved and insides inlaid; signed and dated (1501) by the master carver from The Marches, Antonio Bencivenni.

The most noteworthy element of the wooden furnishing is the double row of decorated panels behind the bench. The upper part holds a niche framed by two Grifi passanti sopra un forziere  (gryphons). An emblem of the moneychangers’ guild. Inside the niche is a gilded terracotta statue of Giustizia (Justice), which is attributed to the Florentine sculptor Benedetto da Maiano in a document mentioning his work with Domenico del Tasso.

The latter’s magnum opus is the bench itself whose remarkable beauty stems from virtuoso craftsmanship and the geometrical marquetry forms. The inlaid interior of the door, which can be seen when the leaves are closed, shows the debt Bencivenni owed to the Urbino style: distinctly visible in the architectural perspectives framed with spiral and lozenge shapes.