Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico (Italian: [baldasˈsaːre kastiʎˈʎoːne]; 6 December 1478 – 2 February 1529), 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.
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.
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. 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; Ludovico da Canossa; Giuliano de' Medici; Cardinal Bibbiena; the brothers Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso from the Republic of Genoa; 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. 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.
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.
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."