Vittorino da Feltre

Pedro Berruguete's portrait of Vittorino da Feltre belongs to the famous series of Uomini Illustri (Famous Men) produced for Federico da Montefeltro's studiolo in the Ducal Palace at Urbino. Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446) was the greatest humanist educator of the 15th century, who ran a famous school in Mantua — La Giocosa — that educated both the children of nobles and of the poor alongside each other, an unusual democratic practice for the period. Berruguete, a Spanish painter who spent time at the Urbino court in the 1470s, absorbed the combination of Flemish panel technique and Italian Renaissance humanism that made the studiolo program one of the most sophisticated in 15th-century European painting.

The Uomini Illustri format presents famous men in a standardized three-quarter view with their identifying attributes — books, instruments, armor — in an architectural niche. Berruguete renders Vittorino with the careful surface modeling of Flemish technique while placing him in the Italianate architectural framework defined by the studiolo's design.