Oratory of the cave

The crypt, or oratory of the cave, presents among its treasures a splendid marble piety made by Giovanni Bandini in 1957 on commission of Francesco Maria II della Rovere.
Its origin is linked to that of a pious Confraternity (reunited by his father Recalchi, a minor observer from Verona, who came to preach in Urbino in the year 1500) who began his activity in various locations, until the patrician Urbino Girolamo Staccoli asked Guidobaldo I of some rooms in the basement of the Duomo.
When the request was accepted, the Brothers reduced to Oratory two of these environments which officiated in 1507 as the Company of Humility. (...)
It is uncertain who gave the drawings of the three chapels; it was thought of Federico Comandino, but the intervention of Girolamo Genga or of the Martini himself can not be excluded. The three chapels repeat the apsidal plan of the presbytery area of ​​the upper temple and are disengaged from a long corridor corresponding to the transept. They were damaged, especially the central, by the collapse of the dome and then by the restorations of the late seventeenth century. (...)
The chapel of the Nativity is of architectural forms that suggest the same Martini: barrel vault set on a frame. At the marble altar, with Corinthian columns and broken tympanum, is a mediocre adoration of the shepherds of the Bolognese Emilio Taruffi, according to the inscription at the bottom of the canvas.
The chapel of the Holy Crucifix, severely damaged by the collapse of the dome, was entirely renovated according to the design of Valadier (1794), while the Rondelli at the end of that century, executed the stuccos of the vault, with lacunars with the symbols of the Passion and the Evangelists. (...)
In the niche of this is placed the wooden crucifix found in 1507 and saved from ruin in 1789.
Here is buried the last Duke of Urbino, Federico Ubaldo, killed in 1623.
The chapel of the Resurrection or of the Pietà has similar forms to that corresponding to the Nativity. On the right wall, inside a niche of black marble, is found the piety that, after the ruin of the dome, was transferred here from the central chapel in 1796. The work, evidently inspired by the painting by Sebastiano del Piombo still enjoys a centuries-old popular admiration. (...) It should be remembered that this piety, at least Christ, is considered by critics as a masterpiece of Bandini - called Giovanni dell'Opera for his long activity at the Opera del Duomo of Florence - performed around about 1583-86. The intense patheticism of the theme seems diluted in the search for a formal simplicity of almost archaistic tendency, evading the temptations of Michelangelo as of the doctrinal classicism of Bandinelli, Giovanni's teacher. "
From Urbino, bricks and stones, Franco Mazzini, Argalia Editore, 1982 Urbino