“Count Baltazar Castiglione to the Excellent Lady Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, at Naples.
“Florence, 15th October, 1504.
“Most Worshipful Madonna and Admired Friend:
“I feel myself highly flattered in that you express yourself satisfied with my Cortigiano (which I caused to be writ out at your request), and which endeavoured, in some slight way, to reproduce the facetious pleasantry joined to the strictest morals which subsist at the Court of Urbino. And I deem your request for a like picture of Florentine society as a most pleasing proof that I have not been hitherto wearisome to you.
“In Florence, since the passing of the rule of the Medici, there has been a passing away also of all standards of aristocracy, so that many of the old families hang their heads in political disgrace, and there be many upstart ones who flaunt and wanton in gorgeousness of apparel. Neither is it possible to say what will be the outcome of this state of social incertitude. I have adopted what seemed to me a safe rule, and have paid my court neither to birth nor to fortune, but to genius. For it is not to be gainsayed that there is gathered in Florence at this time a remarkable circle of learned and clever men, who form, as it were, an order of aristocracy by themselves.
“I paid my respects first to Maestro Pietro Perugino, my sometime friend at Urbino, and whom we there regarded as the very cream and quintessence of painting. He has a home here, living in a goodly and comfortable state, but has grown somewhat crabbed and soured, as happens to men who feel themselves out of fashion and forgotten of the world. He has a rival here, one Michael Angelo, and Perugino having criticised a cartoon which this fellow had set up, representing I know not what absurdity, of bathing soldiers, Angelo replied that he considered Perugino to be a man ignorant in art matters. Which saying so cut to the quick my friend that he somewhat inconsiderately went to law upon the matter, where he gained scant salve for his bruises, being dismissed with the decree that the defendant had only said what was not to be denied.
“This discourteous fellow Angelo formeth the greatest contrast to Leonardo da Vinci, now the leading artist of Florence, in whom the word gentleman hath as full a showing as in any noble living. His fortune is sufficient to his tastes (which are of no niggard order), and his audience chamber is frequented by the nobles, the wits, the fashion, the learning, and beauty of the day.
“But truly, I must not further speak of this paragon, this florescence of his day and generation, or I shall have no space in which to make mention of lesser luminaries, and especially of my young friend, Raphael Santi of Urbino, who is also visiting at this time in Florence. Raphael, while he accords to da Vinci a full meed of praise, and goes daily to sketch from his masterpiece in the Palazzo Vecchio, and while he is as free from envy as an egg from vitriol, yet surprised me by this wondrously assuming assertion, greatly at variance with his usual modesty. ‘My dear Baltazar,’ said he, ‘keep the sketches and miniature I have made for thee. They will one day be as valuable as though signed by da Vinci!’ Truly, presumption dwelleth in the heart of youth, but experience with the world will drive it far from him.
“I am writing this at the Palazzo Strozzi, where I am for the time a grateful guest. Mine host and friend Filippo gave recently an artistic supper, the guests being either artists or lovers of that guild, whether patricians, such as Giocondo, Nasi, Soderini, and others; or scriveners, as Vasari, Macchiavelli, and Guicciardini, and churchmen, as Bibbiena, and Bembo; for all Florence will have its finger in this art pie, and they who have not the wit to paint or the money to purchase, affect superior knowledge, and wag their tongues in dispraise. Finding myself partitioned off between two of these worthies, I should have died of weariness had I not closed my ear on the one side to the borings of Macchiavelli (who had it upon his mind that Giovanni de’ Medici was in Florence, and would have fain tortured from me his hiding place), and on the other from the sleep-producing maunderings of Vasari, who delivered himself of condemnatory criticisms on Raphael. I would not for the world have awakened him to questions by a hint that I already knew more of Raphael than he was like to know in his whole life, but I suffered him to wander on, straining my ears the while to catch some shreds of a merry story with which the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico (Bibbiena) was setting his end of the table in a roar. Supper being ended, I marked that the Cardinal drew Raphael’s arm within his own, and leading him to the garden, there left him with his niece Maria, a most sweet and loving damsel, and one exceptionally endowed by nature; for neither in Florence nor in the various outlandish cities which it hath been my hap to visit in the character of diplomatist, have I found in any five ladies, saving in yourself, worshipful madame, such gentleness, sprightliness, and wit as is bound up in one bundle in the person of Maria Bibbiena.
“Madonna Maddalena Strozzi has confided to me that her uncle Giovanni de’ Medici was in time past so greatly enamoured of this same Maria that he would fain have given up the Church. This were madness indeed on his part, since the wisest policy for any of that family is to keep himself from political ambition, than which there would seem to be no more convincing evidence to the vulgar than devotion to a life of celibacy and monkish austerity; a renouncing of the world, its pomps and vanities, and especially of family alliances and succession plots, friendships, betrothals, marriages, and the like; which, if they be not fooleries of youthful passion, savour of worldly ambition.