Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico (; 6 December 1478 – 2 February 1529),Dates of birth and death, and cause of the latter, from "Baldassarre Castiglione" , Italica, Rai International online. was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author.
Castiglione wrote Il Cortegiano or The Book of the Courtier, a courtesy book dealing with questions of the etiquette and morality of the courtier. It was very influential in 16th-century European court circles.Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano. Penn State University Press, 1995
Biography
Castiglione was born in Casatico, near Mantua (Lombardy) into a family of the minor nobility, connected through his mother Luigia to the ruling Gonzagas of Mantua.The signoria (lordship) of Casatico (today part of the commune of Marcaria) had been assigned to an ancestor, Baldassare da Castiglione, a friend of Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1445.Comune di Marcaria: La Storia , p.3.
In 1494, at the age of sixteen, Castiglione was sent to Milan, then under the rule of Duke Ludovico Sforza, to begin his humanistic studies at the school of the renowned teacher of Greek and editor of Homer Demetrios Chalkokondyles (Latinized as Demetrius Calcondila), and Georgius Merula.‘Baldassarre Castiglione’ , Italica, Rai International online. In 1499, Castiglione's father died unexpectedly and Castiglione returned to Casatico to take his place as the male head of the family. As such, Castiglione's duties included numerous official and diplomatic missions representing the Court of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, whom Castiglione accompanied in that year in Louis XII of France's royal entry into Milan. On a diplomatic mission to Rome, Castiglione met Francesco Gonzaga's brother-in-law, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, husband of Francesco's sister Elisabetta Gonzaga; and in 1504, a reluctant Francesco allowed Castiglione to leave and take up residence in that court.
The court of Urbino at that time was considered as one of the most refined and elegant in Italy, a cultural center ably directed and managed by the Duchess Elisabetta and her sister-in-law Emilia Pia, whose portraits, along with those of many of their guests, were painted by Raphael, himself a native of Urbino. Regular guests included: Pietro Bembo; ; Giuliano de' Medici; Cardinal Bibbiena; the brothers Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso from the Republic of Genoa;Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso were both Genoese patricians: Ottaviano became Doge of Genoa; and during his reign, his younger brother Federigo, a cardinal, assisted him and was given command of the military. Federigo, renowned for his piety and knowledgeable in Hebrew as well as Greek and Latin, also wrote reformist theological and political treatises (including, reputedly a translation of the works of Martin Luther) that were later placed on the Vatican Index of Forbidden Books. See Eugenio Garin, Renaissance Characters (University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 87. It is he who first proposes the topic of the formation of the ideal courtier. Francesco Maria della Rovere (nephew and adopted heir of Duke and Duchess of Urbino); and Cesare Gonzaga, a cousin of both Castiglione and the Duke. The hosts and guests organized intellectual contests, pageants, dances, concerts, recitations, plays, and other cultural activities, producing literary works.Erano adunque tutte l'ore del giorno divise in onorevoli e piacevoli esercizi cosi' nel corpo come dell'animo – "Thus all the hours of the day were divided into activities that were honorable and pleasurable as much for the body as for the soul", The Book of the Courtier, IV. Elisabetta's virtue and abilities inspired Castiglione to compose a series of Platonic love songs and sonnets in her honor. She was played to her husband though his invalid state meant they could never have children.
In 1506 Castiglione wrote (and acted in) a pastoral play, his eclogue Tirsi, in which he depicted the court of Urbino allegorically through the figures of three shepherds. The work contains echoes of both ancient and contemporary poetry, recalling Poliziano and Sannazaro as well as Virgil.
Castiglione wrote about his works and of those of other guests in letters to other princes, maintaining an activity very near to diplomacy, though in a literary form, as in his correspondence with his friend and kinsman, Ludovico da Canossa (later Bishop of Bayeux).
In 1508 Francesco Maria della Rovere succeeded as Duke of Urbino on Guidobaldo's death and Castiglione remained at his court, being posted as envoy to Henry VIII of England. He and the new Duke, who had been appointed capitano generale (commander-in-chief) of the Papal States, took part in Pope Julius II's expedition against Venice, an episode in the Italian Wars. For this the Duke conferred on Castiglione the title of Count of Novilara, a fortified hill town near Pesaro. When Pope Leo X was elected in 1512, Castiglione was sent to Rome as ambassador from Urbino. There he was friendly with many artists and writers; including Raphael, whom he already knew from Urbino, and who frequently sought his advice. In tribute to their friendship, Raphael painted his famous portrait of Castiglione, now at the Louvre.French Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France: Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione.
In 1516 Castiglione was back in Mantua, where he married a very young Ippolita Torelli, descendant of another noble Mantuan family. That Castiglione's love for Ippolita was of a very different nature from his former platonic attachment to Elisabetta Gonzaga is evidenced by the two deeply passionate letters he wrote to her that have survived. Sadly, Ippolita died a mere four years after their marriage, while Castiglione was away in Rome as ambassador for the Duke of Mantua. In 1521 Pope Leo X conceded to him the tonsura (first sacerdotal ceremony) and thereupon began Castiglione's second, ecclesiastical career.
In 1524 Pope Clement VII sent Castiglione to Spain as Apostolic nuncio (ambassador of the Holy See) in Madrid, and in this role he followed court of Emperor Charles V to Toledo, Seville and Granada. In 1527, at the time of the Sack of Rome, Pope Clement VII suspected Castiglione of having harbored a "special friendship" for the Spanish emperor: Castiglione, the pope believed, should have informed the Holy See of Charles V's intentions, for it was his duty to investigate what Spain was planning against the Eternal City. On the other hand, Alfonso de Valdés, twin brother of the humanist Juan de Valdés and secretary of the emperor, publicly declared the sack to have been a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the clergy.
Castiglione answered both the pope and Valdés in two famous letters from Burgos. He took Valdés to task, severely and at length, in his response to the latter's comments about the Sack of Rome. While in his letter to the pope (dated 10 December 1527), he had the audacity to criticize Vatican policies, asserting that its own inconsistencies and vacillations had undermined its stated aim of pursuing a fair agreement with the emperor and had provoked Charles V to attack.
Against all expectations, Castiglione received the pope's apologies and the emperor honored him with the offer of the position of Bishop of Avila. Historians today believe that Castiglione had carried out his ambassadorial duties to Spain in an honorable manner and bore no responsibility for the sack of Rome. He died of the plague in Toledo in 1529.
After his death in 1529 a monument was erected to him in the sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, outside his birthplace of Mantua. It was designed by the mannerist painter and architect Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, and inscribed with the following words:Baldassare Castiglione of Mantua, endowed by nature with every gift and the knowledge of many disciplines, learned in Greek and Latin literature, and a poet in the Italian (Tuscan) language, was given a castle in Pesaro on account of his military prowess, after he had conducted embassies to both great Britain and Rome. While he was working at the Spanish court on behalf of Clement VII, he drew up the Book of the Courtier for the education of the nobility; and in short, after Emperor Charles V had elected him Bishop of Avila, he died at Toledo, much honored by all the people. He lived fifty years, two months, and a day. His mother, Luigia Gonzaga, who to her own sorrow outlived her son, placed this memorial to him in 1529.June Osborne, Urbino: the Story of a Renaissance City (London: Frances Lincoln, 2003), p. 168.
The Book of the Courtier
The Humanist spirit, with its longing to embrace and fuse the variety and confusion of life, fills that Renaissance conversation – at once so formal and so free, so schooled and spontaneous, so disciplined in design and convivial in movement – with an ardent vision of the one virtue of which human nature is normally capable: that of moral urbanity. And it is this virtue which women lend to society. They are the custodians of the social covenant. In the code of the Courtier the Renaissance woman comes into her own and the mission which Isabella [of Este, Marchesa of Mantua, known as the "first lady of the Renaissance"] pursued amid the strenuous turmoil of actual life is realized, in these animated pages, by her passive sister-in-law Elizabetta. Though she takes no part in the conversation, she presides over it, and her presence permeates its conduct. The men defer to her, especially in their conduct with women – "with whom we had the freest and commerce, but such was the respect we bore to the will of the Duchess that freedom was the greatest restraint."Ralph Roeder, Renaissance Lawgivers: Savonarola, Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Aretino (1933, reprint: Transaction Publishers, 2011), p. 371.
In 1528, the year before his death, the book for which Castiglione is most famous, The Book of the Courtier (Il Libro del Cortegiano), was published in Venice by the Aldine Press run by the heirs of Aldus Manutius. The book, in dialog form, is an elegiac portrait of the exemplary court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro of Urbino during Castiglione's youthful stay there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It depicts an elegant philosophical conversation, presided over by Elisabetta Gonzaga (whose husband, Guidobaldo, an invalid, was confined to bed) and her sister-in-law Emilia Pia. Castiglione himself does not contribute to the discussion, which is imagined as having occurred while he was away. The book is Castiglione's memorial tribute to life at Urbino and to his friendships with the other members of the court, all of whom went on to have important positions and many of whom had died by the time the book was published, giving poignancy to their portrayals.Renaissance portraiture, whether painted or written, served a to memorialize. In his 1435 treatise on painting Leon Battista Alberti described the function of portraiture this way:Painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the absent present (as they say of friendship), but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later, so that they are recognized by spectators with pleasure and deep admiration for the artist. Quoted in The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, 2011 Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of New York: Website.