The table known as the ideal city, coming from the Monastery of Santa Chiara in Urbino, probably belonged to the ducal family. Elisabetta da Montefeltro, Federico's daughter, may have brought the painting with her when she entered the Monastery, after being widowed in 1482. Around 1861 the work became part of the state collections of the Museum of the Institute of Fine Arts in Urbino , which will become the National Gallery of the Marches in 1912. The work has been attributed to various artists, including the architect Luciano Laurana for the high precision of the design and the similarity of the classical architectural elements to those present in the Ducal Palace of Urbino , of which the architect was partly the designer. Currently, scholars assign the panel to a generic painter from central Italy, who presumably painted it between 1480 and 1490. Various hypotheses have been formulated on the possible use of this panel. It has been recognized alternatively as a prospective study, as a wooden back of a piece of furniture, or as a model for a scenography. The painting represents the ideals of perfection and harmony of the Italian Renaissance, in the ordered and symmetrical form of a city that is depicted with the scientific principles of the central perspective, evident in the geometric design of the pavement of the square. In the foreground, on the sides, there are two wells with octagonal-based tiers, placed in a perfectly symmetrical way. The scene is dominated by a large religious building with a circular plan, perhaps a baptistery or a mausoleum. The square is bordered by the facades of the Renaissance noble palaces, mostly covered with polychrome marbles that accentuate the perspective view. In succession we see lower buildings of a medieval type. In the background on the right, in a rear position, the façade of a church is visible and in the distance, behind it, a hilly landscape. Rare elements of vegetation decorate balconies and windows and two turtle doves perched on a cornice of the first building on the right, the only creatures visible in the painting. The absence of man, in fact, reigns supreme and gives the image the feeling of eternal silence.