The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

An early example of such walls can be found amid the hubbub of today’s Manhattan, tucked away inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There, among the Grecian urns and the colonial-era silver, is a tiny gem of a room, re-created as it was in fifteenth-century Perugia: the studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Federico, whose title called on him to be variously a royal, a politician, and a warrior, lived in the town of Gubbio in what is now central Italy. The walls of the study allowed the duke, a lover of literature, architecture, and mathematics, to retreat from the company of the townspeople he ruled into quiet study and contemplation. And because his studiolo was constructed in Renaissance Italy, these were no ordinary walls. Craftsmen from Siena, Florence, and Naples created elaborate trompe l’oeil murals made entirely of inlaid wood, a technique called intarsia. In slivers of rosewood, oak, and beech, these designs depict in precise detail (and in linear perspective, a then newly invented technique) simulated cabinets full of precious objects—each one a symbol of what the duke most admired and to which he most aspired. A lute and a harp showed he was a man of culture; a mace and a pair of spurs represented his skill in battle; a bound volume of Virgil’s Aeneid was a sign of his erudition. Incorporated into every corner of the space were mottos and motifs that represented the duke’s personal, familial, and regional identity. Federico’s version of a privat...