The Book of the Courtier

by conte Baldassarre Castiglione

NOTES TO THE FIRST BOOK OF THE COURTIER

Note [21] page 7. “Courtiership” is a sadly awkward rendering of the Italian cortegiania, which implies not only courtesy and courtliness, but all the many other qualities and accomplishments essential to the perfect Courtier or (what in Castiglione’s time was the same) the perfect Gentleman.

Note [22] page 8. The extreme dimensions of the Duchy of Urbino were 64 miles from east to west, and 60 miles from north to south. Its population did not much exceed 150,000.

Note [23] page 8. The first of the four dialogues is represented as having been held on the evening of the day after the close of a certain visit paid by Pope Julius II to Urbino on his return from a successful campaign against Bologna. This visit is known to have lasted from 3 March to 7 March 1507. Castiglione returned from England as early as 5 March, on which date he wrote to his mother from Urbino: “We have had his Holiness here for two days.” It seems probable that this fictitious prolongation of his absence in England was simply a graceful excuse for not himself appearing in the dialogues.

Note [24] page 8. There were a fief and Count of Montefeltro as early as 1154, and his son was made Count of Urbino in 1216, from which time their male descendants ruled over a gradually increased territory until 1508, when the duchy passed to the female line. The name Montefeltro is said to have originated in that of a temple to Jupiter Feretrius, which in Roman times occupied the summit of the crag afterwards known as San Leo, in the Duchy of Urbino.

Note [25] page 9. Such a rule as that of the usurping Cesare Borgia (1502-3) can hardly have been welcome to a population accustomed to the mild sway of the Montefeltro family.

Note [26] page 9. “Duke Federico” di Montefeltro, (born 1422; died 1482), was a natural son of Count Guidantonio di Montefeltro, as appears from the act of legitimation issued by Pope Martin V and also from his father’s testament, by virtue whereof (as well as by the choice of the people) he succeeded his half-brother Count Oddantonio in 1444. In his boyhood he resided fifteen months as a hostage at Venice. Later he studied the theory and practice of war at the Mantuan court, and was trained in the humanities by the famous Vittorino da Feltre. In 1437 he married Gentile Brancaleone, who died childless in 1457. Nearly the whole of his life was spent in military service, as paid ally, now of one prince, now of another. In this capacity he became not only the most noted commander of his time, but always displayed perfect and exceptional fidelity to the causes that he undertook. In 1450 he lost an eye and suffered a fracture of the nose in a tournament; contemporary portraits represent his features in profile. In 1454 he began the construction of the great palace at Urbino. In 1460, at the suggestion of Francesco Sforza (whom he had aided to become Duke of Milan), he married the latter’s accomplished niece Battista Sforza, who bore him seven daughters and one son, Guidobaldo. In 1474 he was made Duke of Urbino and appointed Captain General of the Church by Pope Sixtus IV, and was unanimously elected a Knight of the Garter. He died of fever contracted during military operations in the malarial country near Ferrara. The vast sums spent by him on public buildings, art objects and books, and upon the maintenance of his splendid household, were not extorted from his subjects, but were received from foreign states in return for war service. Thus at the close of his life he drew a yearly stipend equivalent to about £330,000.

It is not easy to draw a picture of his character that shall seem unflattered. Vespasiano, who by years of labour collected his famous library for him, says that his “establishment was conducted with the regularity of a religious fraternity, rather than like a military household. Gambling and profanity were unknown, and singular decorum of language was observed, whilst many noble youths, sent there to learn good manners and military discipline, were reared under the most exemplary tuition. He regarded his subjects as his children, and was at all times accessible to hear them personally state their petitions, being careful to give answers without unnecessary delay. He walked freely about the streets, entering their shops and workrooms, and enquiring into their circumstances with paternal interest.... In summer he was in the saddle at dawn, and rode three or four miles into the country with half-a-dozen of his court ... reaching home again when others were just up. After mass, he went into an open garden and gave audience to all comers until breakfast-time. When at table, he listened to the Latin historians, chiefly Livy, except in Lent, when some religious book was read, anyone being free to enter the hall and speak with him then. His fare was plain and substantial, denying himself sweet dishes and wine, except drinks of pomegranates, cherries, apples, or other fruits. After dinner and supper, an able judge of appeal stated in Latin the causes brought before him, on which the duke gave judgment in that language;... When his mid-day meal was finished, if no one appeared to ask audience, he retired to his closet and transacted private business, or listened to reading until evening approached, when he generally walked out, giving patient ear to all who accosted him in the streets. He then occasionally visited ... a meadow belonging to the Franciscans, where thirty or forty of the youths brought up in his court stripped their doublets, and played at throwing the bar, or at wrestling, or ball. This was a fine sight, which the duke much enjoyed, encouraging the lads, and listening freely to all until supper-time. When that and the audiences were over, he repaired to a private apartment with his principal courtiers, whom, after some familiar talk, he would dismiss to bed, taxing them with their sluggish indulgence of a morning.”

ALFONSO II OF NAPLES
1448-1495

Enlarged from a negative, specially made by Alinari through the courtesy of Professor I. B. Supino, of a medal, in the National Museum at Florence, by Andrea Guazzalotti (1435-1495). See Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens, i, 48, no. 1.

Note [27] page 9. In a Greek epigram written in a book borrowed from Duke Guidobaldo, Poliziano (see note [105]) praises the lender as the worthy son of a father who never suffered defeat, ἀνικήτοιο πατρὸς γονόν. History shows that this phrase was a rhetorical exaggeration, but it became almost proverbial.

Note [28] page 9. Although long since despoiled of its treasures, the palace is still one of the architectural monuments of Italy. Many writers have described its magnificence,—some of the fullest accounts being those by Bernardino Baldi (1553-1617); Fr. Arnold (Der Herzogliche Palast von Urbino; Leipsic: 1857); J. A. Symonds (“Italian Byways;” London: 1883; pp. 129-155); Charles Blanc (Histoire de la Renaissance Artistique en Italie; Paris: 1894; ii, 87-90); and Egidio Calzini (Urbino e i Suoi Monumenti; Florence: 1899; pp. 9-46). Baldi’s description will be found reprinted as an appendix to Rigutini’s (1889 and 1892) editions of The Courtier.

For more than fourteen years Duke Federico employed from thirty to forty copyists in transcribing Greek and Latin MSS. Not only the classics, but ecclesiastical and mediæval authors, as well as the Italian poets and humanists were represented in his library, which contained 792 MSS. Ultimately the collection was sent to Rome, where it forms part of the Vatican Library.

Note [29] page 9. Born in 1422, Duke Federico was in fact sixty years old when he died.

Note [30] page 9. In his Latin epistle to Henry VII of England, Castiglione says that Duke Guidobaldo began to be afflicted with gout at the age of twenty-one years.

Note [31] page 10. Alfonso II of Naples, (born 1448; died 1495), was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and Isabelle de Clermont. As Duke of Calabria, commanding the papal forces, he defeated the Florentine league in 1479, and in 1481 drove the Turks out of southern Italy. On his father’s death in 1494, he succeeded to the crown of Naples; but having rendered himself obnoxious to his subjects, he abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand just before the arrival of Charles VIII of France, and took refuge in a Sicilian convent, where he soon died, tortured by remorse for the hideous cruelties that he had perpetrated. His wife was Ippolita Maria, daughter of the first Sforza duke of Milan; while his daughter Isabella’s marriage to Giangaleazzo Sforza, the rightful duke, and the usurpation of the latter’s uncle Ludovico “il Moro” (see note [302]), became the immediate cause of the first French invasion of Italy by Charles VIII.

Note [32] page 10. Ferdinand II of Naples, (born 1469; died childless 1496), made a gallant but vain stand against the French, and retired to Ischia with his youthful wife-aunt Joanna. When Charles VIII evacuated Naples after a stay of only fifty days, Ferdinand was soon able, with the help of his cousin Ferdinand the Catholic’s famous general Consalvo de Cordova, to regain his dominions, but died a few weeks later. He seems to have had no lack of courage; by his mere presence he once overawed a mob at Naples, and he was beloved by the nation in spite of the odious tyranny of his father and grandfather.

Note [33] page 10. Pope Alexander VI, (born 1431; died 1503), was Roderigo, the son of Giuffredo (or Alfonso) Lenzuoli and Juana (or Isabella) Borgia, a sister of Pope Calixtus III, by whom the youth was adopted and whose surname he assumed. He was elected pope in 1492 through bribery, and while striving to increase the temporal power of the Church, directed his chief efforts towards the establishment of a great hereditary dominion for his family. Of his five children, two (Cesare and Lucrezia) played important parts in his plan. In 1495 he joined the league which forced Charles VIII to retire from Italy, although it had been partly at his instigation that the French invaded the peninsula. In 1498 Savonarola was burned at Florence by his orders. In 1501 he instituted the ecclesiastical censorship of books. He is believed to have died from accidentally taking a poison designed by him for a rich cardinal whose possessions he wished to seize. His private life was disgraced by orgies, of which the details are unfit for repetition. His contemporary Machiavelli says: “His entire occupation, his only thought, was deception, and he always found victims. Never was there a man with more effrontery in assertion, more ready to add oaths to his promises, or to break them.” While Sismondi terms him “the most odious, the most publicly scandalous, and the most wicked of all the miscreants who ever misused sacred authority to outrage and degrade mankind.”

FERDINAND II OF NAPLES
1469?-1496

From Alinari’s photograph (no. 11305) of an anonymous bronze bust in the National Museum at Naples.

Note [34] page 10. Pope Julius II, (born 1443; died 1513), was Giuliano, the second son of Raffaele della Rovere (only brother of Pope Sixtus IV) and Teodora Menerola. Made a cardinal soon after his uncle’s election, he was loaded with sees and offices, including the legateship of Picene and Avignon, which latter occasioned his prolonged absence from Italy and afforded him an escape from the wiles of his inveterate enemy Alexander VI. The outrages with which Alexander sought to punish his sturdy opposition to the scandals of the Borgian court, aroused in him a fierceness of spirit that was alien to the seeming mildness of his early character and became the bane of his own pontificate. His younger brother Giovanni married a sister of Duke Guidobaldo, a union that cemented the friendship between the two families and furnished the Duchy of Urbino an heir in the person of Francesco Maria della Rovere. When Julius engaged Michelangelo to design his tomb, the old basilica of St. Peter’s was found too small to contain it, whereupon the pontiff is said to have decreed that a new church be built to receive it, and blessed the laying of the first stone shortly before setting out on his campaign against Bologna in 1506. In 1508 he formed the League of Cambray for the recovery of certain papal fiefs appropriated by Venice at the time of Cesare Borgia’s downfall, and in 1511 the so-called Holy League for the expulsion of the French from Italy. Italian unity was the unavowed but real goal at which his policy aimed.

Although a munificent patron of art and letters, Julius was frugal and severe,—a man of action rather than a scholar or theologian. In giving Michelangelo directions for the huge bronze statue at Bologna, he said: “Put a sword in my hand; of letters I know nothing.” Another of his reported sayings is: “If we are not ourselves pious, why should we prevent others from being so?”

Note [35] page 10. Although unexpressed in the original, the word ‘learned’ seems necessary to complete the obvious meaning of the passage.

From his tutor Odasio of Padua, we learn that in his boyhood Guidobaldo was even for the time exceptionally fond of study. He could repeat whole treatises by heart ten years after reading them, and never forgot what he resolved to retain. Besides his classical attainments, he appreciated the Italian poets, and showed peculiar aptitude for philosophy and history.

Note [36] page 10. The Italian piacevolezza conveys somewhat the same suggestion of humour which the word ‘pleasantness’ carried with it to the English of Elizabeth’s time, and which still survives in our ‘pleasantry.’

Note [37] page 11. Emilia Pia, (died 1528), was the youngest daughter of Marco Pio, one of the lords of Carpi. Her brother Giberto married a natural daughter of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (see note [64]), while her cousin Alberto Pio (1475-1530) was the pupil and became the patron and financial supporter of the scholar-printer Aldus Manutius. In 1487 she was married very young to the studious Count Antonio di Montefeltro (a natural half-brother of Duke Guidobaldo), who left her a widow in 1500. She resided at Urbino and became the trusted and inseparable companion of the Duchess Elisabetta, whom she accompanied on journeys and in exile, ever faithful in misfortune and sorrow. In the duchess’s testament she was named as legatee and executrix. She seems to have died without the sacraments of the Church, while discussing passages of the newly published Courtier with Count Ludovico Canossa. The part taken by her in these dialogues evinces the charm of her winning manners as well as her possession of a variety of knowledge and graceful accomplishment rare even in that age of womanly genius. Always ready to lead or second the learned and sportive pastimes by which the court circle of Urbino gave zest to their intercourse and polish to their wit, she was of infinite service to the duchess, whose own acquirements were of a less brilliant kind.

Note [38] page 11. It may be doubted whether the duchess’s influence always availed to secure what we should now regard as decorous behaviour at her court, and in an earlier draft of The Courtier Castiglione allowed himself a freedom, not to say licence, of expression singularly in contrast with the general tone of the version published.

Note [39] page 12. The duchess and her husband were expelled from their dominions by Cesare Borgia in 1502, and again in 1516 she was compelled to leave Urbino for a longer time, when Leo X seized the duchy for his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici. Her conduct on these occasions showed rare fortitude and dignity.

Note [40] page 12. These devices, so much in vogue during the 16th century in Italy, were the “inventions” which Giovio (a contemporary writer upon the subject) says “the great lords and noble cavaliers of our time like to wear on their armour, caparisons and banners, to signify a part of their generous thoughts.” They consisted of a figure or picture, and a motto nearly always in Latin. The fashion is said to have been copied from the French at the time of the invasions of Charles VIII and Louis XII.

Note [41] page 12. Federico Fregoso, (born 1480; died 1541), was a younger brother of Ottaviano (see note [11]), and was educated for holy orders under the direction of his uncle Duke Guidobaldo, at whose court he also perfected himself in worldly accomplishments. In 1507 Julius II made him Archbishop of Salerno, in the kingdom of Naples, but, owing to his supposed French sympathies, he was not allowed to enjoy this benefice, and the next year was put in charge of the bishopric of Gubbio. In the same year he was sent by Julius with the latter’s physician to attend Duke Guidobaldo’s death-bed, but arrived too late. During the nine years that followed his brother’s election as Doge of Genoa (1513), he by turns commanded the army of the Republic, led her fleet against the Barbary pirates (whom he routed in their own harbours), and represented her at the papal court. During the Spanish siege of Genoa in 1522, he escaped to France, was warmly received by Francis I, and made Abbot of St. Bénigne at Dijon, where he devoted himself to theological study. In 1528 he returned to Italy and was appointed to the see of Gubbio. His piety and zeal for the welfare of his flock won for him the title of “father to the poor and refuge of the distressed.” In 1539 he was made a cardinal, and two years later died at Gubbio, being succeeded in that see by his friend Bembo. After his death, a discourse of his on prayer happening to be reprinted together with a work by Luther, he was for a time erroneously supposed to have been heretical. He was a profound student of Hebrew, and an appreciative collector of Provençal poetry. His own writings are chiefly doctrinal, and his reputation rests rather upon his friends’ praise of his wit, gentleness, personal accomplishments and learning, than upon the present value of his extant works.

Note [42] page 12. Pietro Bembo, (born at Venice 1470; died at Rome 1547), was the son of a noble Venetian, Bernardo Bembo (a man of much cultivation, who paid for the restoration of Dante’s tomb at Ravenna), and Elena Marcella. Having received his early education at Florence, where his father was Venetian ambassador, he studied Greek at Messina under Lascaris (a native of Hellas, whose grammar of that tongue was the first Greek book ever printed, 1476), and philosophy at Padua and Ferrara, where his father was Venetian envoy and introduced him to the Este court. Here he became acquainted with Lucrezia Borgia, who had recently wedded Duke Ercole’s son Alfonso, and to whom he dedicated his dialogues on love, Gli Asolani. By some writers indeed he is said to have been her lover, but the report is hardly confirmed by the character of the letters exchanged between the two, 1503-1516. Having been entertained at Urbino in 1505, he spent the larger part of the next six years at that court, where he profited by the fine library, delighted in many congenial spirits, and became the close friend of Giuliano de' Medici, who took him to Rome in 1512 and recommended him to the future pope, Leo X. On attaining the tiara, Leo at once appointed him and his friend Sadoleto (see note 242) papal secretaries, an office for which his learning and courtly accomplishments well fitted him. His laxity of morals and his paganism were no disqualification in the eyes of the pope, whom he served also in several diplomatic missions, and from whom he received benefices and pensions sufficient to enrich him for life. In 1518 his friend Castiglione sent him the MS. of The Courtier, requesting him to “take the trouble ... to read it either wholly or in part,” and to give his opinion of it. Ten years later, when the book was printed, it was Bembo to whom the proofs were sent for correction, the author being absent in Spain. Even before the death of Leo X in 1521, Bembo had entered upon a life of literary retirement at Padua, where his library and art collection, as well as the learned society that he drew about him, rendered his house famous. Nor was it less esteemed by reason of the presence, at its head, of an avowed mistress (Morosina), who bore him several children. After her death, he devoted himself to theology, entered holy orders, reluctantly accepted a cardinal’s hat in 1539, and in 1541 succeeded his friend Fregoso in the bishopric of Gubbio, to which was added that of Bergamo. His death was occasioned by a fall from his horse, and he was buried at Rome in the Minerva church, between his patrons Leo X and Clement VII. His works are noteworthy less for their substance than for the refining influence exerted by their form. He is said to have subjected all his writings to sixteen (some say forty) separate revisions, and a legend survives to the effect that he advised a young cleric (Sadoleto) to avoid reading the Epistles of St. Paul, lest they might mar the youth’s style. His numerous private and official letters have preserved many valuable facts and furnish interesting illustration of contemporary manners and character. Humboldt praises him as the first Italian author to write attractive descriptions of natural scenery, and cites especially his dialogue on Mt. Ætna.

GIACOMO SADOLETO
1477-1547

Head enlarged from a photograph, specially made by Alinari, of a part of the fresco, “Leo X's Entry into Florence,” in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). See Milanesi’s edition of Vasari’s Opere, viii, 142. The chief facts of his life are given in note 242, at page 369 of this volume.

Note [43] page 12. Cesare Gonzaga, (born about 1475; died 1512), was a native of Mantua, being descended from a younger branch of the ruling family of that city, and a cousin of Castiglione, with whom he maintained a close friendship. His father’s name was Giampietro, and he had a brother Luigi. Having received a courtly and martial education at Milan, and after spending some time with his relatives at Mantua, he entered the service of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. In 1504 he shared Castiglione’s lodgings after their return from a campaign against Cesare Borgia’s strongholds in Romagna, and in the carnival of 1506 they together recited Castiglione’s eclogue Tirsi, in the authorship of which he is by some credited with a part. A graceful canzonet, preserved in Atanagi’s Rime Scelte, attests his skill in versification. On Guidobaldo’s death in 1508, the two friends remained in the service of the new duke, Francesco Maria. In 1511 Cesare fought bravely against the French at Mirandola, and the next year took part in the reduction of Bologna, where he soon died of an acute fever. Little more is known of him, beyond the fact that he was a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, that Leo X sent him on a mission to Charles V of Spain, and that he was among the many friends of the famous Isabella d'Este (see note [397]).

Note [44] page 12. Count Ludovico da Canossa, (born 1476; died 1532), belonged to a noble Veronese family (still honourably extant), and was a close friend of Castiglione and a cousin of the latter’s mother. His boyhood was passed at Mantua, and his happiest years at Urbino, where he was received in 1496. In the pontificate of Julius II he went to Rome, and was made Bishop of Tricarico, in southern Italy, 1511. Under Leo X he was entrusted with several embassies, one of which (1514) was to England to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis XII, and another (1515) was to the new French king, Francis I, at whose court he continued to reside, and through whose influence he was made Bishop of Bayeux in 1516. In 1526 and 1527 he served as French ambassador to Venice. His ability and zeal as a diplomatist are shown not only by the importance of the posts that he held, but by his numerous letters that have been preserved. At the time of his friend Bibbiena’s death in 1520, Canossa remarked that it was a fixed belief among the French that every man of rank who died in Italy was poisoned.

Note [45] page 12. Gaspar Pallavicino, (born 1486; died 1511), was a descendant of the marquesses of Cortemaggiore, near Piacenza. He appears in The Courtier as the youthful woman-hater of the company, and was a friend of Castiglione and Bembo. For an interesting discussion of his rôle in the dialogues, see Miss Scott’s paper, cited above (page [316]).

Note [46] page 12. Ludovico Pio belonged to the famous family of the lords of Carpi (a few miles north of Modena), and was a brave captain in the service of the Aragonese princes, of Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan, and of Pope Julius II. His father Leonello and more celebrated uncle Alberto had been pupils of Aldus, and were second cousins of Emilia Pia. His wife was the beautiful Graziosa Maggi of Milan, who is immortalized in the paintings of Francia and the writings of Bembo.

Note [47] page 12. Sigismondo Morello da Ortona is presented in The Courtier as the only elderly member of the company, and the object of many youthful jests. He is known to have taken part in the ceremony of the formal adoption of Francesco Maria della Rovere as heir to the duchy in 1504, is referred to in Castiglione’s Tirsi, and seems to have been something of a musician.

LOUIS XII OF FRANCE
1462-1515

Much enlarged from a negative, specially made by Berthaud, of a part of a pen-drawing in the National Library at Paris. The drawing is touched with gold, and forms part of a series illustrating a MS. chronicle (nos. 20360-2) engrossed at Genoa in 1510 by Anthoine Bardin. See note 250.

Note [48] page 12. Of Roberto da Bari little more is known than that his surname was Massimo, and that he was taken ill in the campaign of 1510 against the Venetians and retired to Mantua. Thither Castiglione sent a letter to his mother, warmly recommending Roberto to her hospitality, and saying that he loved the man like a brother.

Note [49] page 12. Bernardo Accolti, (born about 1465; died 1535), was generally known as the Unico Aretino, from the name of his birthplace (Arezzo) and in compliment to his ‘unique’ faculty for extemporising verse. His father Benedetto was a jurist, and the author of a dull Latin history of the First Crusade, from which Tasso is believed to have drawn material for the Gerusalemme Liberata. His poetical celebrity commended him to the court of Urbino, where (as at Rome and in other places) he was in the habit of reciting his verses to vast audiences of rich and poor alike. When an exhibition by him was announced, guards had to be set to restrain the crowds that rushed to secure places, the shops were closed, and the streets emptied. His life was a kind of lucrative poetic vagabondage: thus we find him flourishing, caressed and applauded, at the courts of Urbino, Mantua, Naples, and especially at that of Leo X, who bestowed many offices upon him, of which, however, his wealth (acquired by his recitations) rendered him independent, enabling him to indulge in a life of literary ease. His elder brother Pietro became a cardinal, bought Raphael’s house, and is said to have had a hand in drafting the papal bull against Luther in 1520. He was an early patron of his notorious fellow-townsman Pietro Aretino. Such of his verse as has survived is so bald and stilted as to excite no little wonderment at the esteem which he enjoyed among his contemporaries. In The Courtier he poses as the sentimental and afflicted lover, the “slayer” of duchesses and other noble ladies, who (according to his own account) kept flocking in his train, but who more probably were often making sport of him.

Note [50] page 12. Giancristoforo Romano, (born about 1465; died 1512), was the son of Isaia di Pippo of Pisa and the pupil of Paolo Romano. Perhaps best known as a sculptor, he possessed skill also as a goldsmith, medallist, architect and crystal carver, cultivated music and wrote verse. During the last years of the Sforza power at Milan, he accompanied the duke’s wife, Beatrice d'Este, from place to place, and is now identified as the author of her portrait bust in the Louvre. He executed also at least two portrait medals of her sister Isabella d'Este, acted as adviser and agent of the Gonzagas in the purchase of art objects, worked at Venice, Cremona, Rome and Naples, and is known to have been at Urbino about the time of the Courtier dialogues. In a long letter written by him to Bembo in 1510, he describes the court of Urbino as “a true temple of chastity, decorum and pudicity.” In 1512 he was directing architect at Loreto (see note [311]), where he died in May, bequeathing his collection of medals and antiques to a hospital, for the purpose of having three masses said weekly for the repose of his soul.

Note [51] page 12. Of Pietro Monte little more is known than that he was a master of military exercises at the Urbino court, and perhaps a captain in the duke’s army. He may have been identical with one Pietro dal Monte, who is mentioned as a soldier in the pay of Venice (1509), and described as “blind in one eye, but of great valour, gentle speech, and not unlearned in letters,” and as “commanding 1500 infantry, and a man of great experience not only in war but in affairs of the world.”

Note [52] page 12. Antonio Maria Terpandro, one of the most jovial and welcome visitors at Urbino, is said by Dennistoun to have been a musical ornament of the court. He enjoyed the heartiest friendship of Bembo and Bibbiena.

Note [53] page 12. Niccolὸ Frisio or Frigio is mentioned in a letter by Bembo as a German, but seems more probably to have been an Italian. Dennistoun speaks of him as a musician. In a letter from Castiglione to his mother (1506), the writer warmly commends to her “one messer Niccolò Frisio, who I hear is there [i.e., in Mantua], and I earnestly hope that you will treat him kindly, for I am under the greatest obligation to him with respect to my Roman illness.... I am sure he loves me well.” In another letter by a friend of Bembo, Frisio is described (1509) as an Italian long resident in courts, sure of heart, gentle, a good linguist, faithful to his employers, and as having been used by Julius II in negotiating the League of Cambray against Venice. He had relations also with the marchioness Isabella of Mantua (see note [397]), whom he aided in the collection of antiquities. Growing weary of worldly life, he became a monk in 1510, and retired to the Certosa of Naples.

Note [54] page 12. According to Cian, omini piacevoli (rendered ‘agreeable men’) here means ‘buffoons.’

Note [55] page 13. This passage establishes the date of the first dialogue as 8 March 1507.

Note [56] page 13. My lady Emilia contends that she has already told her choice of a game, in proposing that the rest of the company should tell theirs.

Note [57] page 14. Costanza Fregosa was a sister of the two Fregoso brothers already mentioned, and a faithful companion of the Duchess of Urbino. She married Count Marcantonio Landi of Piacenza, and bore him two worthy children, Agostino and Caterina, to the former of whom Bembo stood sponsor and became a kind of second father. Three letters by the lady have been preserved.

Note [58] page 15. Belief in the efficacy of music as a cure for the bite of the tarantula still survives in Andalusia, Sardinia and parts of southern Italy. In a note on the tarantella dance, Goethe wrote: “It has been remarked that in the case of mental ailments, and of a tarantula bite, which is probably cured by perspiration, the movements of this dance have a very salutary effect on the softer sex.” “Travels in Italy” (Ed. Bohn, 1883), page 564.

Note [59] page 15. The moresca (mime or morris-dance) seems to have been a kind of ballet or story in dance, often very intricate and fanciful. At the courts of this period, it was generally introduced as an interlude between the acts of a comedy. In a letter quoted by Dennistoun (“Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,” ii, 141), Castiglione describes a moresca on the story of Jason, which was thus performed at the first presentation of Bibbiena’s Calandra before the court of Urbino, 6 February 1513.

Note [60] page 16. Fra Mariano Fetti, (born 1460; died 1531), was a native of Florence, and beginning life as a barber to Lorenzo de' Medici, always remained faithful to that family. At Rome, during the pontificate of Julius II, he won the reputation and enjoyed the privileges of “the prince of jesters,” and became even more famous under Leo X, upon whom as a child he had bestowed affectionate care, and who as pope did not forget his kindness. Thus in 1514 he was made Frate piombatore, or affixer of lead seals to papal bulls, in which office he followed the architect Bramante, was succeeded by the painter Sebastiano Luciani (better known as “del Piombo”), and admitted earning yearly what would now be the equivalent of about £1600, by turning lead into gold. While it remains uncertain whether he was more buffoon or friar, he had a great love for artists, and even composed verse. He seems to have continued in the enjoyment of fame and favour during the reign of the second Medicean pope, Clement VII.

Note [61] page 16. Fra Serafino was probably a Mantuan, and had a brother Sebastiano. He lived long at the Gonzaga court, where he was employed in organizing festivals, and at Urbino, where the few of his letters that have survived show him in familiar relations with other interlocutors in The Courtier. While at Rome in 1507, with the suite of the Duchess of Urbino, he was seriously wounded in the head by an unknown assailant, probably in return for some lampoon or scandal of his against the papal court.

Note [62] page 17. This letter S was evidently one of the golden ciphers that ladies of the period were fond of wearing on a circlet about their heads. In her portrait the duchess is represented as wearing a narrow band, from which the image of a scorpion hangs upon her forehead. The S may have been used on this occasion as the initial letter of the word scorpion, and seems in any case to have been an instance of the ‘devices’ mentioned in note 40.

A sonnet, purporting to be the work of the Unico Aretino, was inserted in the edition of The Courtier published by Rovillio at Lyons in 1562 and in several later editions, as being the sonnet here mentioned. In its place, however, Cian prints another sonnet, preserved in the Marciana Library at Venice and possessing higher claims to authenticity. Some idea of the baldness of both may be gained from the following crude but tolerably literal translation of the second sonnet:

Consent, O Sea of beauty and virtue,

That I, thy slave, may of great doubt be freed,

Whether the S thou wearest on thy candid brow

Signifies my Suffering or my Salvation,

Whether it means Succour or Servitude,

Suspicion or Security, Secret or Silliness,

Whether ’Spectation or Shriek, whether Safe or Sepultured!

Whether my bonds be Strait or Severed:

For much I fear lest it give Sign

Of Stateliness, Sighing, Severity,

Scorn, Slash, Sweat, Stress and Spite.

But if for naked truth a place there be,

This S shows with no little art

A Sun single in beauty and in cruelty.

Note [63] page 18. The pains of love were a frequent theme with Bembo, and are elaborately set forth in his Gli Asolani. Quite untranslatable into English, his play upon the words amore (love) and amaro (bitter) is at least as old as Plautus’s Trinummus.

Note [64] page 22. Ippolito d'Este, (born 1479; died 1520), was the third son of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara (see note [203]) and Eleanora of Aragon (see note 399). At the instance of his maternal aunt Beatrice’s husband, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (see note [395]), he was given the rich archbishopric of Strigonio, to which was attached the primacy of that country, and made the journey thither as a mere boy. In 1493 Alexander VI made him a cardinal. Soon after the death of his sister Beatrice, her husband Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan gave him the vacant archbishopric of that city, and the same year (1497) he exchanged the Hungarian primacy, with its burdensome requirement of foreign residence, for the bishopric of Agria in Crete. In 1502 he was made Archbishop of Capua in the kingdom of Naples, but bestowed the revenues of the see upon his widowed and impoverished aunt, the ex-Queen of Hungary, and a little later was made Bishop of Ferrara,—all before reaching the age of twenty-four years. He was also Bishop of Modena and Abbot of Pomposa. During his brother’s reign at Ferrara, the young cardinal took an active part in public affairs, several times governing in the duke’s absence, and showing brilliant capacities for military command. After the accession of Leo X, he resided chiefly at Rome, where he was always a conspicuous figure and carefully guarded his brother’s interests. He was a friend and protector of Leonardo da Vinci, and maintained Ariosto in his service from 1503 to 1517. A prelate only in name, regarding his many ecclesiastical offices merely as a source of wealth, he united the faults and vices to the grace and culture of his time.

Note [65] page 26. Berto was probably one of the many buffoons about the papal court in the time of Julius II and Leo X. He is again mentioned in the text (page 128) for his powers of mimicry, etc.

MATTHIAS CORVINUS OF HUNGARY
1443-1490

Much enlarged from a cast, courteously furnished by the Austrian authorities, of an anonymous medal in the Imperial Museum at Vienna (Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens, ii, 82, no. 9). See note 395.

Note [66] page 26. This “brave lady” is by some identified as the famous Caterina Sforza, a natural daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, who by the last of her three husbands became the mother of the even more famous condottiere Giovanni de' Medici delle Bande Nere. She was born in 1462, and died in 1509 after a life of singular vicissitudes. For an extraordinary story of her courage, see Dennistoun’s “Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,” i, 292.

The “one whom I will not name at present” is supposed to have been a certain brave soldier of fortune, Gaspar Sanseverino, who is often mentioned as “Captain Fracassa,” and was a brother of the Galeazzo Sanseverino who appears a little later in The Courtier (see page [34] and note [72]).

Note [67] page 28. The philosopher in question has been variously identified as Democritus and Empedocles.

Note [68] page 30. In Charles V's romantic plan for deciding by single combat his rivalry with Francis I, Castiglione was selected as his second, but declined to violate diplomatic proprieties by accepting the offer,—being at the time papal envoy at Charles’s court.

Note [69] page 31. Strictly speaking, the joust was a single contest between man and man, while the tourney was a sham battle between two squadrons. Stick-throwing seems to have been an equestrian game introduced by the Moors into Spain, and by the Spaniards into Italy. In the carnival of 1519 it was played by two companies in the Piazza of St. Peter’s before Leo X.

Note [70] page 31. Vaulting on horse seems to have included some of the feats of agility with which modern circus riders have familiarized us.

Note [71] page 33. “Finds grace,” i.e. favour: literally “is grateful” (grato) in the sense of acceptable or pleasing. Compare the familiar phrase persona grata.

Note [72] page 34. Galeazzo Sanseverino was one of the twelve stalwart sons of Roberto Sanseverino, a brave condottiere who aided to place Ludovico Sforza in power at Milan, rebelled against that prince, and was slain while fighting for the Venetians in 1486. Galeazzo entered the service of Ludovico, whose favour had been attracted by his personal charm, literary accomplishments and rare skill in knightly exercises. When he married his patron’s natural daughter Bianca, in 1489, Leonardo da Vinci arranged the jousts held in honour of the wedding. Thenceforth he adopted the names Visconti and Sforza, and was treated as a member of the ducal family. In 1496, at the head of the Milanese forces, he besieged the Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis XII) at Novara, but in 1500 he was captured by the French, and after the final downfall of Ludovico (to whom he seems to have remained creditably loyal) he entered the service of Louis XII, who made him Grand Equerry in 1506. The duties of his office included the superintendence of all the royal stables and of an academy for the martial education of young men of noble family. For a further account of his interesting life, and especially of his friendship with Isabella d'Este, see Mrs. Henry Ady’s recent volume, “Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan.”

Note [73] page 35. The word sprezzatura (rendered “nonchalance”) could hardly have been new to Castiglione’s contemporaries, at least in its primary meaning of disprizement or contempt. He may, however, have been among the first to use it (as here and elsewhere in The Courtier) in its modified sense of unconcern or nonchalance. Compare Herrick’s ‘wild civility’ in “Art above Nature” and “Delight in Disorder.”

Note [74] page 37. Naturally Venice could hardly be a place well suited for horsemanship; its citizens’ awkward riding was a favourite subject of ridicule in the 16th century.

Note [75] page 37. The incident is supposed to have occurred on the occasion of a visit paid by Apelles to Rhodes not long after the death (323 B.C.) of Alexander the Great, whom he had accompanied into Asia Minor. Apelles was eager to meet Protogenes, and on landing in Rhodes went at once to the painter’s house. Protogenes was absent, but a large panel stood ready for painting. Apelles took a pencil and drew an exceedingly fine coloured line, by which Protogenes on his return immediately recognized who his visitor had been, and in turn drew a finer line of another colour upon or within the first line. When Apelles saw this line, he added a third line still further subdividing the one drawn by Protogenes. Later the panel was carried to Rome, where it long excited wondering admiration in the Palace of the Cæsars, with which it was finally destroyed by fire. Apelles was the first to stimulate appreciation of the merits of Protogenes by buying several of the latter’s works at enormous prices: he maintained however that he excelled Protogenes in knowing when to cease elaborating his paintings.

Note [76] page 37. The play upon words here is untranslatable into English. The Italian tavola stands equally well for a dining-table and for the tablet or panel upon which pictures were painted.

Note [77] page 40. ‘As those who speak [are present] before those who speak’ is a literal translation of the accepted reading of this passage. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that the earliest translator (Boscan) ventures to deviate from the letter of the Italian text for the sake of rendering what surely must have been the author’s meaning: como los que hablan á aquellos con quien hablan, i.e. “as those who speak [are present] before those with whom they speak.”

Note [78] page 41. Although the dialect of Bergamo was (and still is) ridiculed as rude and harsh, it possessed a copious popular literature.

Note [79] page 41. Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch, (born 1304; died 1374), belonged to a family that was banished from Florence at the same time with Dante, whom he remembered seeing in his childhood. He was the first Italian of his time to appreciate the value of public libraries, to collect coins and inscriptions as sources of accurate historical information, and to urge the preservation of ancient monuments. Had he never written a line of verse, he would still be venerated as the apostle of scholarship, as the chief originator of humanistic impulses based upon what Symonds describes as “a new and vital perception of the dignity of man considered as a rational being apart from theological determinations, and ... the further perception that classic literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom.”

Note [80] page 41. In an age when grammatical and rhetorical treatises, in the modern sense of the word, hardly existed, it was natural that the study of classic models should take the form of imitation.

Note [81] page 42. It will be remembered that Giuliano de' Medici was a native Tuscan.

Note [82] page 43. This Tuscan triumvirate was called “the three Florentine crowns:” Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Note [83] page 44. Evander was a mythical son of Hermes, supposed to have founded a colony on the Tiber before the Trojan War. Turnus was a legendary king of an Italian tribe, who was slain by Æneas.

Note [84] page 44. The Salian priests were attached to the worship of Mars Gradivus. On the occasion of their annual festival, they went in procession through Rome, carrying the sacred shields of which they were custodians and which they beat in accompaniment to dance and song. The words of their chaunts are said to have become unintelligible even to themselves, and appear to have set forth a kind of theogony in praise of all the celestial deities (excepting Venus), and especially of one Mamurius Veturius, who is by some regarded as identical with Mars.

Note [85] page 44. Marcus Antonius (143-87 B.C.) and Licinius Crassus (140-91 B.C.), the two most famous orators of early Rome, were regarded by Cicero as having been the first to rival their Greek predecessors. Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114-50 B.C.), the great advocate of the aristocratic party at Rome, yielded the palm of oratory only to Cicero (106-43 B.C.). Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.), a Roman soldier, author and reforming statesman, sought to restore the ancient purity and simplicity of the earlier republic. Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.), a Roman epic poet and annalist, imparted to the language and literature of his nation much of the impulse that affected their growth for centuries. Virgil was born 70 B.C., and died 19 B.C.

Note [86] page 44. Horace was born 65 B.C., and died 8 B.C. Plautus died 184 B.C.

Note [87] page 44. Sergius Sulpicius Galba was Roman Consul 144 B.C.; Cicero praised his oratory, but found it more old-fashioned than that of Lælius (flor. 200 B.C.) and Scipio Africanus the Younger (died 129 B.C.).

Note [88] page 46. In his Prose, Bembo says that courtly Italian, especially during the pontificate of the Spaniard, Alexander VI (1492-1503), was full of Spanish expressions,—an assertion amply confirmed by contemporary letters, which are rich also in Gallicisms.

Note [89] page 46. The Spanish primor has failed to win Italian citizenship. Aventurare has become naturalized in Italy; as also have acertare (in the sense, however, of to assure, to make certain, to verify), ripassare (to repass, to repeat, to rebuff), rimproccio or rimprovero, and attilato or attillato, which is recognizable in the Spanish atildado. Creato (Spanish criado) is now replaced by creatura in the sense mentioned in the text; in Sicily creato is used to mean servant.

Note [90] page 47. The reference here is of course to the Attic, Doric, Ionic and Æolic dialects.

Note [91] page 47. Titus Livius was born at Padua 59 B.C., and died there 17 A.D. Of the one hundred and forty-two books of his History (which covered the period from the founding of Rome in 750 B.C. down to 9 B.C., and upon which he spent forty years of his life), only thirty-five have survived, together with an anonymous summary of the whole.

Note [92] page 48. Of the four forms here condemned by Castiglione as corrupt, three (Campidoglio, Girolamo, and padrone) have become firmly established in Italian. Campidoglio had been used by Petrarch (Trionfo d'Amore, i, 14),—an “old” but certainly not an “ignorant” Tuscan.

Note [93] page 49. Oscan was a pre-Roman language spoken by the Opici, an Italian tribe inhabiting the Campanian coast. Much of the mist that shrouded it for centuries has now been dispelled by the epigraphists. Both Dante and Petrarch were great lovers of Provençal, with which in Castiglione’s time his friend Federico Fregoso was familiar.

Note [94] page 50. Bidon was a native of Asti, and one of the most famous choristers in the service of Leo X.

ANDREA MANTEGNA
1431-1506

Enlarged from a part of Alinari’s photograph (no. 18657) of the bronze relief, surmounting Mantegna’s tomb in the Church of Sant'Andrea at Mantua, variously attributed to Bartolommeo di Virgilio Melioli (1448-1514), to Giovanni Marco Cavalli (born 1450), and, with less reason, to Sperandio di Bartolommeo de' Savelli (1425?-1500?).

Note [95] page 50. Marchetto Cara, a native of Verona, entered the service of the Gonzagas in 1495 and lived nearly thirty years at Mantua, where he was made a citizen by the Marquess Federico. He frequented also the court of Urbino, and is known to have been sent by the Marchioness Isabella to relieve the tedium of her friend and sister-in-law the Duchess Elisabetta’s exile at Venice in 1503. In his time he was among the most prolific and successful composers of profane music, especially of ballads and madrigals, and a number of his popular pieces have been preserved.

Note [96] page 50. Leonardo da Vinci, (born 1452; died 1519), was the natural son of a notary, Pietro Antonio, of the village of Vinci, situated about fourteen miles east of Florence. He studied some three years with Donatello’s pupil Verocchio at Florence. Meeting small pecuniary success there, he removed to Milan about 1483 and entered the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza, who is said to have paid him the equivalent of £4000 a year while painting the “Last Supper,” and for whom he completed in 1493 the model of a colossal equestrian statue of Duke Francesco Sforza, never executed in permanent form. He was employed by Cesare Borgia as military engineer, and in that capacity visited Urbino in July 1502. His famous portrait known as the “Monna Lisa” or “La Gioconda,” upon which he worked at times for four years, was finished about 1504 and afterwards sold by him to Francis I. In 1507, he had been appointed painter to Louis XII, but did not visit France until 1516. On the election of Leo X in 1513, he journeyed to Rome in the company and service of Giuliano de' Medici, who paid him a monthly stipend of £66. Although he was received with favour by the new pope and lodged in the Vatican, his stay in Rome was artistically unprolific, his interest at the time being chiefly confined to chemistry and physics, and nature attracting him more than antiquities, of which he spoke as “this old rubbish” (queste anticaglie). Three years before his death he was visited at Amboise in France by Cardinal Ludovico of Aragon, who is mentioned later in The Courtier (p. 159), and whose secretary left an interesting account of an interview with him, describing the painter as then disabled by paralysis of the hand.

Note [97] page 50. Andrea Mantegna, (born 1431; died 1506), was a native of Vicenza and probably of humble origin. When a mere child he became the pupil and adopted son of the noted painter and instructor, Francesco Squarcione of Padua, and was soon enrolled in the painters’ guild of that city. In 1449 he began painting for the d'Este at Ferrara, and between 1453 and 1459 he married Niccolosa, a daughter of Squarcione’s rival Giacopo Bellini, and sister of the more famous brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. He painted also at Verona, and about 1460 entered the service of the Gonzagas at Mantua, where the remainder of his life was chiefly spent, although he worked for Pope Innocent VIII at Rome about the year 1488, before which date he was knighted by the Marquess of Mantua. By one writer he is affirmed to have cast the fine bust which ornaments his tomb at Mantua, and which is said once to have had diamond eyes. He is known to have understood bronze casting, and besides the brush and the engraver’s burin, he handled modelling tools, while a sonnet of his has been preserved. Although praised by Vasari as kindly and in every way estimable, he is shown by contemporary letters to have been rather irritable and litigious in private life. Albert Dürer tells us that one of the keenest disappointments of his life was occasioned by the great painter’s death before he was able to make an intended journey to Mantua for the purpose of visiting Mantegna.

Note [98] page 50. Raffaello Santi or Sanzi,—euphonized by Bembo as Sanzio,—(born 1483; died 1520), was a native of Urbino and the son of Giovanni Santi and Magia Ciarla. The father was himself a painter of no mean skill, and wrote a quaint rhymed chronicle of the Duchy of Urbino, which is preserved in the Vatican and contains much interesting information. Having lost both parents when he had reached the age of eleven years, and probably having first studied at Urbino under Timoteo della Vite, Raphael was sent by a maternal uncle to the studio of Perugino at Perugia. The rest of his short life was an unbroken course of happy labour and brilliant success. In 1499 he seems to have been at Urbino for the purpose of arranging for the welfare of a sister, and again in 1504, when, after executing several works (including, it is believed, portraits of the duke and duchess) for the ducal family, he went to Florence with a letter of commendation from Guidobaldo’s sister. From 1504 to 1508 he resided chiefly at Florence, although he again visited Urbino twice, just before and probably soon after the date of the Courtier dialogues. His friendship with so many members of the Urbino court (Giuliano de' Medici, Bibbiena, Bembo, Canossa, and Castiglione), and even his acquaintance with Julius II, probably began during these later visits to his native city. In 1508 he was called to Rome by Julius, and resided there until his death. On succeeding Bramante as architect of St. Peter’s in 1514, he wrote to Castiglione: “Sir Count: I have made drawings in several manners according to your suggestion, and if everyone does not flatter me, I am satisfying everyone; but I do not satisfy my own judgment, because I dread not satisfying yours. I am sending them to you. Pray choose any of them, if you deem any worthy. Our Lord [i.e. Leo X] in honouring me has put a great burden on my shoulders,—that is, the charge of the fabric of St. Peter’s. I hope, however, not to fall under it; and the more so, because the model I have made for it pleases his Holiness and is praised by many choice spirits; but in thought I soar still higher. I fain would renew the beautiful forms of ancient buildings, but know not whether my flight will be that of Icarus. Vitruvius affords me much light on the subject, but less than I need. As to Galatea, I should hold myself a great master if she possessed half the fine things you write me; but in your words I recognize the love you bear me: and I tell you that to paint one beautiful woman, I should need to see several beautiful women and to have you with me to choose the best. But as there is dearth of good judgments and of beautiful women, I am using a certain idea that has occurred to my mind. Whether this has any artistic excellence in it, I know not,—but I am striving for it. Command me.” Passavant affirms that the ‘drawings’ mentioned at the beginning of this letter were designs for a medal that Castiglione meant to wear. Raphael is said to have painted two portraits of Castiglione, one of which (1516) is in the Louvre and appears as the frontispiece to this volume. His epitaph was written by Bembo, while Castiglione composed a Latin elegy in his honour.

Note [99] page 50. Michelangelo Buonarroti, (born 1475; died 1564), was a native of Caprese, a village about forty-seven miles south-east of Florence, and the son of Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni and Francesca, daughter of Neri del Sera. His first schoolmaster seems to have come from Urbino. Apprenticed at the age of thirteen to Ghirlandajo, he soon came under the protection of Lorenzo de' Medici. In 1496 he removed to Rome, and remained there five years. From 1501 to 1504 he was working upon the great statue of David at Florence, and prepared his cartoon for a vast fresco on the Battle of Cascina, which, although never executed, was often copied, and is said to have exerted a greater influence on the art of the Renaissance than any other single work. In 1505 he was called to Rome to design a colossal mausoleum for Julius II. The anxieties and disappointments connected with this project became the continual tragedy of his long life. “Every day,” he wrote, “I am stoned as if I had crucified Christ. My youth has been lost, bound hand and foot to this tomb.” The matter was finally ended by the placing of his statue of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli at Rome. In the spring of 1506 he was present at the unearthing of the Laocoön, and at the date of the Courtier dialogues he was engaged in casting a great bronze statue of Julius II at Bologna. Duke Guidobaldo’s collection at Urbino seems to have included a Cupid made by Buonarroti in imitation of the antique, originally owned by Cesare Borgia, regained by him when he captured Urbino in 1502, and soon presented by him to Guidobaldo’s sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella d'Este of Mantua. The famous tomb statue of Giuliano de' Medici at Florence is hardly to be regarded as a portrait, and was of course executed long after the period of The Courtier. In 1519 the Marquess of Mantua wrote to Castiglione, who was his ambassador at Rome, regarding a monument to his father that he hoped to have the master design. In 1523 Castiglione brought to Mantua a sketch made by Buonarroti for a villa which the marquess intended to build at Marmirolo.

Note [100] page 50. Giorgio Barbarelli, known as Giorgione or “Big George,” (born about 1478; died 1511), was a native of Castelfranco, a town about forty miles north-west of Venice, and was reputed to be a natural son of one Giacopo Barbarelli, a Venetian, and a peasant girl. Lack of data renders a consecutive account of his life and work impossible. He was brought up in Venice, and bred as a painter in the school of the Bellini. Vasari says that he played upon the lute and sang well, and was of a gentle disposition. Although he seems to have been exceptionally independent of great people, he enjoyed the especial favour of the Marchioness Isabella d'Este of Mantua. In a letter written from Venice in the year before that of the Courtier dialogues, Albert Dürer declared Giorgione to be the greatest painter in the city, which could then boast of the Bellini, Palma Vecchio, Carpaccio and Titian. One of the most acute of recent critics, Mr. Bernhard Berenson, ascribes to him only seventeen existing pictures, of which the best known is the Fête Champêtre in the Louvre, while the only one whose authenticity is entirely free from doubt is the “Madonna and Saints” in the Duomo at Castelfranco. The Urbino collection comprised two portraits by Giorgione, one of which is supposed to have represented Duke Guidobaldo, but unfortunately is lost.

Note [101] page 51. Isocrates, (born 436; died 338 B.C.), an Athenian orator, was a pupil of Socrates, and became the instructor of many famous orators. His diction was of the purest Attic, and his writings were highly prized by the Alexandrian grammarians. The first printed edition of his works (1493) was edited by Castiglione’s Greek master, Chalcondylas. Lysias, (died about 380 B.C.), an Athenian orator, abandoned the stilted monotony of the older speakers, and employed the simple language of every-day life, but with purity and grace. Æschines, (born 389; died 314 B.C.), was the rival and finally unsuccessful antagonist of Demosthenes.

Note [102] page 51. Caius Papirius Carbo, (Consul in 120 B.C.), was an adherent of the Gracchi, but became a renegade and finally committed suicide. He was generally suspected of murdering Scipio Africanus the Younger. While abominating the man’s character, Cicero praises his oratory. Caius Lælius Sapiens was Consul in 140 B.C. His friendship with Scipio is commemorated in Cicero’s De Amicitia. While he was in his own time regarded as the model orator, later grammarians resorted to his works for archaisms. Scipio Africanus the Younger, (died 129 B.C.), captured Carthage in the Third Punic War, and was leader of the aristocratic party at Rome against the popular reforms of the Gracchi. His works, of which only a few fragments survive, are praised by Cicero and were long held in esteem. Galba, see note [87]. Publius Sulpicius Rufus, (born 124; died 88 B.C.), was a tribune of the plebs. Cicero says: “Of all the orators I ever heard, Sulpicius was the most dignified, and, so to speak, the most tragic.” Caius Aurelius Cotta, (Consul 75 B.C.), is characterized by Cicero, who had argued a cause against him, as a most acute and subtle orator, but his style seems to have been dry and unimpassioned. Caius Sempronius Gracchus, (died 121 B.C.), a son of the famous Cornelia, and brother-in-law of Scipio Africanus the Younger, is noted chiefly for his vain struggle in behalf of popular rights. Only fragments of his oratory have survived. Marcus Antonius and Crassus, see note [85].

Note [103] page 51. “In a certain place,” i.e., De Oratore, II, xxiii, 97.

Note [104] page 51. The Italian virtù has here its Latin meaning of natural vigour. See also note [330].

LORENZO DE' MEDICI
1448-1492

Enlarged from a negative, specially made by Alinari through the courtesy of Professor I. B. Supino, of a medal, in the National Museum at Florence, by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1429-1498).

Note [105] page 51. Angelo Poliziano, (born 1454; died 1494), was a native of Montepulciano (about twenty-seven miles south-east of Siena), of which his name is a Latinized form. To English students he is better known as Politian, and as the author of the oft-cited line, “Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.” His father Benedetto Ambrogini died poor, leaving a widow and five young children almost destitute. At the age of ten, Angelo studied at Florence, and composed Latin poems and Greek epigrams while yet a boy. At thirteen, he published Latin epistles; at sixteen, he began his Latin translation of the Iliad; at seventeen, he distributed Greek poems among the learned men of Florence; and at eighteen, he edited Catullus. He was received into Lorenzo de' Medici’s household, and before he was thirty years old, he was professor of Latin and Greek at the University of Florence and was entrusted with the care of Lorenzo’s children. His pupils included the chief students of Europe. A born poet, entitled to the middle place of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto, he was the first Italian to combine perfect mastery of Latin and a correct sense of Greek with genius for his own native literature. Towards the close of his life, he entered holy orders and became a canon of the Cathedral at Florence. He was ill formed, and had squinting eyes and an enormous nose. His morals were lax. He was succeeded by Bembo as dictator of Italian letters.

Note [106] page 51. Lorenzo de' Medici, (born 1448; died 1492), was the grandson of Cosimo, Pater Patriæ, and father of Giuliano of The Courtier. On the death of his father Pietro in 1469, he succeeded jointly with his brother Giuliano to the family wealth and political predominance. Giuliano’s assassination in the Piazzi conspiracy of 1478 (which Poliziano witnessed and narrated in Latin) left Lorenzo sole ruler, but like his predecessors, he governed the republic without any title, by free use of money and great adroitness in securing the elevation of his adherents to the chief offices of state. He was a man of marvellous range of mental power,—an epitome of Renaissance versatility. Never relaxing his hold on public affairs, among philosophers he passed for a sage; among men of letters, for an original and graceful poet; among scholars, for a Hellenist sensitive to every nicety of Attic idiom; among artists, for a connoisseur of consummate taste; among libertines, for a merry and untiring roysterer; among the pious, for an accomplished theologian. “He was no less famous for his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apothegms and maxims, as good a judge of cattle as of statues, as much at home in the bosom of his family as in the riot of an orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen.” (Symonds.)

Note [107] page 51. Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, (born 1466; died 1522), was a native of Florence, studied at Pisa, and returning to his native city became intimate with Ficino, of whose philosophy he may be said to have been the heir. For many years he lectured at Florence with such success that the Venetians tried to entice him to the University of Padua, in vain. A partisan of the Medici, he enjoyed the favour of Leo X and of Cardinal Giulio, afterwards Clement VII. All his works (written in Latin) are of a philosophical character. His style is said to be sprightly and correct, and despite the ridicule then cast upon the vulgar tongue, he himself translated several of his books into Italian, notably the Tre Libri d'Amore, with which Castiglione shows familiarity in the Fourth Book of The Courtier.

Note [108] page 52. Caius Silius Italicus, (died 100 A.D.), was Consul under Nero and a follower of Cicero in the art of oratory. After a prosperous public career, he retired to a life of literary ease. His most important work was a long epic poem on the Second Punic War, and soon sank into oblivion. Cornelius Tacitus, (died probably after 117 A.D.), was Consul and orator as well as historian.

Note [109] page 54. Marcus Terentius Varro, (born 116; died about 27 B.C.), was somewhat older than Cæsar, Cicero and Sallust, but outlived them all. He was regarded as the most learned of the Romans, and was made director of the public library by Cæsar, although he had been a partisan of Pompey. Of his seventy-four works, which embraced nearly all branches of knowledge, only two survive. They were much esteemed by the Christian Fathers.

Note [110] page 55. Catullus was born about 87 B.C. His 39th ode begins: “Because Egnatius has white teeth, he smiles wherever he goes” (Egnatius, quod candidos habet dentes, renidet usque quaque). Later in the same ode, he says: “Nothing is more pointless than a pointless laugh” (Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est).

Note [111] page 57. Monseigneur d'Angoulême, afterwards Francis I, (born 1494; died 1547), was the son of Count Charles d'Angoulême and Louise of Savoy. His governor, Sieur de Boisy, strove to inspire him with a taste for arms and a love of letters and art, and it was from romances of chivalry that he derived much of his education and many of his ideas of government. He succeeded his cousin Louis XII in January 1515, and one of the earliest functions at his court was the marriage of his aunt Filiberta of Savoy to Giuliano de' Medici, who is here represented by Castiglione (with what truth remains uncertain) as having visited the French court shortly before the date of the Courtier dialogues. Writing in 1515, the Venetian ambassador describes the young king as being really handsome (the evidence of our nearly contemporaneous medal illustration to the contrary), courageous, an excellent musician, and very learned for one of his age and rank. Under his rule, relations between France and Italy became closer and more active, and there began to penetrate beyond the Alps that Italian influence which he later greatly increased by marrying his son to Giuliano de' Medici’s great-niece Caterina. His education had included a study of Italian literature and customs, and besides Federico Fregoso and Ludovico da Canossa he received and honoured many other illustrious Italians, among whom were Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini. He caused search to be made in Italy for rare MSS., and had them copied for his library. His reign, although clouded by defeats and humiliations, began a true literary and artistic Renaissance in France.

Note [112] page 57. The reference here is to the famous Sorbonne (founded by Robert Sorbon in 1253) towards which Francis was for religious reasons hostile during the early years of his reign, and to which he raised up a rival by founding the Collège de France in 1530.

Note [113] page 58. Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a Roman general and Consul (74 B.C.), noted chiefly for his wealth, luxury, and patronage of art and letters. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a Roman general, Consul (88 B.C.), and dictator, was the first Roman to lead an army against the city, and the first to publish lists of his enemies, proscribing them and offering a reward for their death. Cneius Pompeius, or Pompey, (born 106; died 48 B.C.), a member of the Triumvirate with Cæsar and Crassus, and the finally unsuccessful champion of the conservative party against the power of Cæsar. Marcus Junius Brutus, (born 85; died 42 B.C.), a statesman and scholar, who adhered to Pompey, joined Cassius in the assassination of Cæsar, and was finally defeated by Mark Antony. Hannibal, (born 247 B.C.), the famous Carthaginian general who conquered Spain, crossed the Alps, overran Italy, was defeated by Scipio the Elder, became chief magistrate of Carthage, and committed suicide in exile about 183 B.C.

Note [114] page 59. In the last chapter of his “Prince,” Machiavelli (who was Castiglione’s contemporary) says: “Although military excellence seems to be extinct in Italy, this arises from the fact that the old methods were not good and there has been no one who knew how to devise new ones. We have great excellence in the members, if only it were not lacking in the heads. In duels and engagements between small numbers, see how superior the Italians are in strength, in dexterity, in resource. But when it comes to armies, they make no showing; and it all proceeds from the weakness of the heads. Whence it arises that in so much time, in so many battles fought in the last twenty years, when an army has been purely Italian, it has always succeeded ill.” Compare this opinion with Montaigne’s remark (Essais, II, c. 24) that the officers of Charles VIII ascribed their easy Italian conquests to the fact that “the princes and nobility of Italy took more pleasure in becoming ingenious and learned than in becoming vigorous and warlike.”

Note [115] page 59. In 1524 Castiglione wrote to his mother at Mantua regarding the education of his son, who had just begun to study the Greek alphabet, as follows: “As to Camillo’s learning Greek, I have had a letter also from Michael, who says so many things that he seems to me a flatterer. It is enough that the boy shows good capacity and inclination, and good pronunciation. As for Latin, I should be glad to have him attend more to Greek at present, for those who know are of opinion that one ought to begin with Greek; because Latin is natural to us, and we almost acquire it even though we spend little labour upon it; but Greek is not so.”

Note [116] page 59. The reader will hardly need to be reminded that the habit of versification was very prevalent in all ranks of Italian society in Castiglione’s day. Varchi (1502-1565) informs us that the vernacular was generally despised in the Florence of that time, and adds: “And I remember, when I was a lad, that the first and most important command which fathers usually gave to their children, and masters to their pupils, was that they must on no account whatever read anything in the vulgar tongue.”

Note [117] page 59. In the Vita Nuova (c. 25), Dante says: “And the first who began to speak like a native poet was moved thereto because he would have his words understood of woman.”

Note [118] page 59. Aristippus, (flor. 400 B.C.), was a Greek philosopher, whose school took its name from his birthplace, Cyrene in Africa. He was for some time a follower of Socrates, and afterwards lived at the court of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. Diogenes Laertius relates that when Aristippus was asked what was the greatest thing he had gained from philosophy, he replied: “The power to meet all men with confidence.”

Note [119] page 60. Among Plutarch’s works is a tract entitled “How to Tell Friend from Flatterer.” In 1532 Erasmus published a Latin version of it dedicated to Henry VIII of England.

Note [120] page 61. The first quatrain of a well-known sonnet by Petrarch:

Giunto Alessandro alla famosa tomba

Del fero Achille, sospirando disse:

O fortunato, cite sì chiara tromba

Trovasti, e chi di te sì alto scrisse!

of which Mr. John Jay Chapman has kindly furnished the following translation:

When Alexander reached the sacred mound

Where dread Achilles sleeps, “O child of Fame,”

He sighed. “Thy deeds are happy that they found

Old Homer’s tongue to clarion thy name.”

In his oration Pro Archia, Cicero describes Alexander as exclaiming: “O fortunate youth, who found Homer as herald of thy valour!” (O fortunate, inquit, adulescens qui tuæ virtutis Homerum præconem inveneris!).

Note [121] page 62. In an earlier version, this passage reads: “Grasso de' Medici will in this matter have the same advantage over Messer Pietro Bembo that a hogshead has over a barrel.” Bembo was slender, while Grasso (fat man) was probably the nickname of a corpulent soldier in the service of the Medici, possibly identical with a certain Grasso to whom Bembo desired to be commended in a letter to Bibbiena, 5 February 1506.

Note [122] page 63. The instrument used in Socrates’s time κιθάρα was certainly not the modern cithern, but more probably a kind of large lyre, supported by a ribbon and played with a plectrum of metal, wood or ivory.

Note [123] page 63. In a note to this passage, Cian says: “Abito [rendered ‘habit of mind’] is a special condition or habitual quality of the mind, which manifests itself outwardly in a special costume [rendered ‘habitual tendency’], or equally habitual behaviour, which in turn reacts upon the disposition and moral attitude of the individual.”

Note [124] page 64. Lycurgus probably lived in the 9th century B.C., and was the reputed author of the Spartan laws and institutions.

Note [125] page 64. Epaminondas, a Theban general, defeated the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 B.C. and at Mantinea in 362 B.C., and lost his life in the latter battle.

Note [126] page 64. Themistocles, the Athenian statesman and general, persuaded the Greeks to resist the second Persian invasion by naval force at Salamis in 480 B.C.

Note [127] page 64. One of the finest of the Pompeian frescoes represents the centaur Chiron teaching Achilles to play upon the lyre.

Note [128] page 64. The reference here is of course to the familiar story of Orpheus and the beasts.

Note [129] page 64. Castiglione doubtless had in mind the legend of Arion, a Greek poet of Lesbos, who probably flourished about 700 B.C. We have a fragment of his verse addressed to Poseidon and telling of the dolphins, who had wafted the poet safely to land when he had lost his course.

Note [130] page 65. As we shall see, the Magnifico’s request was not complied with until the second evening (page 81).

Note [131] page 65. Quintus Fabius Pictor was a Roman general who served in the Second Punic War, and wrote a Greek history of Rome, much esteemed by the ancients, but now lost. Pliny affirms that Fabius painted the temple in the 450th year after the founding of Rome (i.e. 300 B.C.), and that the painting was still extant about the beginning of our era.

Note [132] page 66. The Apollo Belvedere was discovered in 1503, the Laocoön group in 1506, and other famous antique statues only a few years earlier.

Note [133] page 66. The comparative merits of painting and sculpture were a frequent subject of discussion during this period. The Renaissance writers had inherited from antiquity a fondness for seeking superiority or inferiority in matters between which there exists such a diversity of character as to render comparison unprofitable. According to Vasari, Giorgione maintained “that in one picture the painter could display various aspects without the necessity of walking round his work, and could even display, at one glance, all the different aspects that could be presented by the figure of a man, even though the latter should assume several attitudes,—a thing which could not be accomplished by sculpture without compelling the observer to change his place, so that the work is not presented at one view, but at different views. He declared, further, that he could execute a single figure in painting, in such a manner as to show the front, back, and profiles of both sides at one and the same time.... He painted a nude figure, with its back turned to the spectator, and at the feet of the figure was a limpid stream, wherein the reflection of the front was painted with the utmost exactitude: on one side was a highly burnished corselet, of which the figure had divested itself, and wherein the left side was reflected perfectly, every part of the figure being clearly apparent: and on the other side was a mirror, in which the right profile of the nude form was also exhibited. By this beautiful and admirable fancy, Giorgione desired to prove that painting is, in effect, the superior art, requiring more talent and demanding higher effort.”

In one of his letters, Michelangelo wrote: “My opinion is that all painting is the better the nearer it approaches to relief, and relief is worse in proportion as it inclines to painting. And so I have been wont to think that sculpture is the lamp of painting, and that the difference between them might be likened to the difference between the sun and moon.... By sculpture I understand an art which operates by taking away superfluous material; by painting, one that attains its result by laying material on. It is enough that both emanate from the same human intelligence, and consequently sculpture and painting ought to live in amity together, without these lengthy disputations. More time is wasted in talking about the problem than would go to the making of figures in both species.”

Note [134] page 68. In his “Treatise on Painting,” Leonardo da Vinci says: “The first marvel we find in painting is the apparent detachment from the wall or other plane, and the cheating of keen perceptions by something that is not separate from the surface.”

Note [135] page 68. “Grottoes,” i.e. the Catacombs. Speaking in his autobiography of the remains of ancient art found in the Catacombs, Benvenuto Cellini says: “These grotesques have received this name from the moderns because they were found by scholars at Rome in certain subterranean caverns, which had anciently been rooms, chambers, studios, halls and the like. Since these scholars found them in these cavernous places (which had been built by the ancients on the surface and had become low), and since such low places are known at Rome by the name Grottoes, for that reason they received the name grotesques.” Cellini here tries to explain the origin of the name applied to ornaments (such as the arabesques of the Renaissance) in which figures, human to the waist, terminate in scrolls, leafage, etc., and are combined with animal forms and impossible flowers. In this sense the word was used as early as 1502 in a contract between the Cardinal of Siena and the painter Pinturicchio. It had of course not yet reached its modern signification, so fully discussed in the appendix to Volume IV of Ruskin’s “Modern Painters.” In Castiglione’s time it was not known that the catacomb decorations were Christian, and in any case they were founded on pagan models.

Note [136] page 69. Demetrius I of Macedon, (died 283 B.C.), was the son of Antigonus, who was one of Alexander’s most illustrious generals and succeeded to the Macedonian throne.

Note [137] page 69. Of Metrodorus, nothing more is known than Pliny’s account of the incident recorded in our text.

Note [138] page 69. Lucius Æmilius Paulus, (died 160 B.C.), was a Roman general, Consul, and statesman of the aristocratic party. The incident mentioned in the text occurred after his victory over King Perseus of Macedon in 168 B.C.

Note [139] page 70. Campaspe, according to Pliny, was the name of the beautiful slave given by Alexander to Apelles, as narrated at page 68.

Note [140] page 70. Zeuxis, (flor. 400 B.C.), belonged to the Ionian school of Greek painting, which was characterized by sensuous beauty and accurate imitation of nature. He lived at Athens, and his idealism is said to have been rather of form than of character. The picture referred to in the text represented Helen of Troy, was regarded as his masterpiece, and was probably identical with a picture mentioned as being at Rome. The story of the five maidens is said to have been cited by Tintoretto in support of his maxim, “Art must perfect Nature.”

Note [141] page 71. The Marquesses Febus and Gerardino di Ceva were sons of the Marquess Giovanni (who was living as late as 1491), and belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Piedmont and indeed of all Italy. They were born towards the close of the 15th century and died about the third decade of the 16th, having obtained the investiture of their fief in 1521. They sided sometimes with the Emperor and sometimes with France, as best suited them, and left rather a bad name. To escape punishment for killing a cousin, Gerardino stabbed himself, and Febus also died “disperato,” leaving two daughters in grief and shame.

Note [142] page 71. Ettore Romano Giovenale was a cavalier of whom little more is known than that he was in Francesco Maria’s service, fought successfully as one of the thirteen Italian champions at Barletta, was afterwards in the service of the Duke of Ferrara, who dismissed him for an act of treachery.

Note [143] page 71. Collo Vincenzo Calmeta of Castelnuovo, (died 1508), was a courtly poet and prose writer, who had been secretary to the Duchess Beatrice d'Este of Milan. Later he enjoyed the especial favour of this lady’s sister, the Marchioness Isabella d'Este of Mantua, and also of the Duchess of Urbino, who protected him from the displeasure of her brother the Marquess of Mantua, and at whose court he improvised verse somewhat after the manner of the Unico Aretino. In a letter (1504) from Urbino to Isabella d'Este, Emilia Pia wrote: “Of news here there is none that is not known to you, except that Calmeta is continually composing songs and divers other things, and this carnival has written a new comedy, which he would have sent you if he had thought it would give you pleasure.” Among Calmeta’s works were a verse compendium of Ovid’s Ars Amandi, and a biography of his friend and fellow improvisatore, Serafino Ciminelli d'Aquila (see note [255]). As known to us, his poetical writings do not rise above mediocrity, and wholly fail to explain the esteem in which they were held.

Note [144] page 71. Orazio Florido was a native of Fano, one of the Adriatic coast towns nearest to Urbino. Having been chancellor to Duke Guidobaldo, he became secretary to Duke Francesco Maria. When Francesco was combating the usurper Lorenzo de' Medici in 1517, he sent one of his officers with Florido under protection of a safe-conduct to challenge Lorenzo to personal combat. In spite of the safe-conduct, Florido was detained and sent to Leo X at Rome, where he was basely tortured in the hope of extorting political secrets from him. He remained steadfastly faithful to his master, and afterwards made a tour of the courts of Europe seeking aid for his lord.

Note [145] page 73. Margarita Gonzaga was a niece of the Duchess of Urbino, being a natural daughter of the Marquess Gianfrancesco of Mantua. She was for many years one of the ornaments of the Urbino court. Various mentions of her in contemporary letters show her as a woman of unusual beauty, sprightly wit and gay disposition. She had several suitors, apparently including Filippo Beroaldo, who is mentioned later in The Courtier (page [139]).

Note [146] page 73. Of Barletta nothing more is known than what is contained in this and another shorter mention of him in The Courtier (page [87]).

BEATRICE D'ESTE
DUCHESS OF MILAN
1475-1497

Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 42.371) of the portrait, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence, attributed to Piero della Francesca (1420-1492). For an account of this and other portraits, see l'Archivio Storico dell'Arte for 1889, p. 264. Some of the events of her short life are mentioned in note 398 at page 399 of this volume.

Note [147] page 73. The original reads: havendo prima danzato una bassa, ballarono una Roegarze. The danza bassa was of Spanish origin and is believed to have consisted of sliding steps and of posturing, in which the feet were not lifted. The verb ballare seems to be derived from the low Latin balla, a ball. In the Middle Ages the game of ball was accompanied with dance and song, and we may well believe that a class of dances, thus originating and denominated generally balli, were more animated than the danza bassa. Although a Greek derivation has been ascribed to the word roegarze, Cian affirms that the dance thus named was of French origin. The earliest French translator of The Courtier renders the word by rouergoise, which is apparently derived from Rouergue, the name of an ancient French province to the south-west of Lyons.

FILIPPO MARIA VISCONTI
DUKE OF MILAN
1391-1447

Reduced from Giraudon’s photograph (no. 254) of a drawing, in the Louvre, by Vittore Pisano, better known as Pisanello, (1380?-1451?).