Raffaele pinx. L. Ceroni sculp.
COUNT BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE.
From a picture in the Torlonia Gallery, Rome
From Castiglione, in Lombardy, sprang the ancestry of Count Baldassare, and among them were numbered not a few names of note in church and state. His father was no mean soldier, in times when the captains of Italy bore a European reputation; his mother, a Gonzaga of the Mantuan house, was descended from the haughty Farinato degli Uberti, who, when accosted by Dante in The Vision,—
|
"His heart and forehead there Erecting, seemed as in high scorn he held E'en hell." |
The Count was born at Casatico, in the Mantuese, on the 6th of December, 1478.[*36] His education, besides including the various studies and accomplishments usual to an Italian gentleman of the fifteenth century, was specially directed to those classical attainments which entered into the literary pursuits of the age. The death of his father left him early master of a handsome patrimony, and he at once embraced that courtier-life for which he was peculiarly fitted,—a life, which in a land subdivided into petty sovereignties, constituted the only profession open to civilians of noble birth and distinguished endowments, and on which his pen was destined to confer perpetual illustration. After a brief visit to Milan,[*37] and a short campaign in Naples with his relative the Marquis Francesco of Mantua, he repaired to Rome in 1503, where, by discretion and winning address, he quickly gained the new Pontiff's favour. In Count Castiglione, the penetration of Julius recognised a fit instrument for promoting his favourite scheme of securing Urbino to his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere; and by attaching him to Guidobaldo, he fixed at that court a friend whose influence was certain to extend itself, and whose example would benefit his youthful relation.
The court of Urbino had already been for half a century the brightest star in the constellation of Italian principalities, and under its fostering influence were fully developed those fine qualities which nature and early training had formed in Castiglione. His first essay was as captain of fifty men-at-arms, with 400 ducats of nominal pay, besides allowances; and his earliest exploit in this new service was the reduction of Forlì, in 1504. The finances of Guidobaldo were necessarily at a low ebb, and it is amusing to find Baldassare's frequent lamentations to his mother, over the arrears of his pay:—"Our doings are jolly but inconsiderable, that is, on small means; we have never yet seen a farthing, but daily and most devoutly look for some cash." It was not, however, till nearly a year later that he received twenty-five ducats to account, having often in the interval asked her aid, representing himself as penniless, and living upon credit. In 1509,[*38] after returning from his mission to England, which peculiarly required the graces of a finished cavalier, and of which some account will be found in [II. of the Appendix], he attached himself to the Duke's immediate person during the brief remainder of his life, and when it closed, was sent to Gubbio, to maintain the interests of the succession, in event of any popular outbreak. The favour which he had enjoyed from Guidobaldo was amply continued under his nephew, whose fortunes he followed during several years, sharing his successes in the field, and sustaining him under his disgrace at the pontifical court. These events must, however, be here touched with a flying pen, that we may not anticipate details on which we shall afterwards have to dwell. His reward was a grant of Novillara, near Pesaro; and when Francesco Maria had exchanged sovereignty for exile, he returned to the service of his natural lord, the Marquis of Mantua, whom he long represented at the court of Leo X. To this Pontiff, Baldassare had nearly become related, by a marriage with his niece Clarice de' Medici, which was greatly promoted by Giuliano, during their residence at Urbino. The negotiation was, however, broken off in January, 1509, by the intrigues of her aunt, Lucrezia Salviati, who persuaded her uncle, the Cardinal Giovanni, that, by bestowing her hand upon Filippo Strozzi, he would strengthen the interest of his family at Florence. The match having been, according to Italian usage, an interested arrangement, its dissolution was borne with great philosophy by the intended bridegroom; who some seven years later married Ippolita, daughter of Count Guido Torelli, a celebrated condottiere, by Francesca, daughter of Giovanni Bentivoglio, Lord of Bologna.[*39] The ceremony was performed at Mantua, and was celebrated with tournaments and pompous shows, in which the court and people took a lively interest. But their happy union was of brief duration. The Countess died four years after, in childbed of a daughter. Her name has been embalmed in a beautiful Latin ode, wherein her husband embodied those laments for his absence which he doubtless had often heard from her lips, expressing all the tenderness of nuptial love, and adorning a woman's pathos with a poet's fire. Nothing can be more beautiful than the allusion to her husband's portrait:—
In her epitaph, the Count summed up his wife's character and endowments, with a doubt whether her beauty or her virtue were more remarkable; to which her eulogist, Steffano Guazzo, has added a third grace—her learning. During the first anguish of widowhood he was supposed to have turned his thoughts to ecclesiastical orders; but whatever views of that nature he may have entertained were speedily abandoned; and in 1523 we find him again in Lombardy, with his gallant company, under the banner of the Gonzagas.