On the accession of Clement VII., the Marquis of Mantua again sent him to represent his interests at Rome, where he was not long in obtaining from the new Pope the same favour which he had enjoyed under his uncle, Leo X. His diplomatic talents were now acknowledged as of the first order; and Clement, foreseeing, perhaps, the impending difficulties of his position with the Emperor, prevailed upon Castiglione to accept the nomination of nuncio to Madrid. His courtly qualities were not less agreeable to Charles V. and the grandees of Spain than they had been in Italy; and in the romantic project by which the Emperor proposed to decide in single combat his unquenchable rivalry with Francis I., the Count was selected as his second,—an honour which his diplomatic functions prevented his accepting. Even while the troops and name of Charles were used by Bourbon to inflict upon the Apostolic See the greatest blow which its capital had suffered since the temporal power of the Church rose on the ruins of the Roman empire, the Nuncio was receiving new honours at Madrid, and was only prevented by his own scruples from obtaining the temporalities of the bishopric of Avila, one of the richest in Spain. In this most delicate position he retained the confidence of his master, who seems to have been satisfied that to no remissness on his part were owing the horrors of the sack of Rome. But these miserable results of jealousies between the Pope and the Emperor, which all his tact and influence were powerless to remove, rendered his position anything but enviable, and appear to have preyed alike upon mind and body. He sank under a short illness at Toledo, on the 2nd of February, 1529,[*40] and was lamented by Charles as "one of the best knights in the world." A letter of condolence, written to his mother by Clement, affords ample evidence that the fruitless results of his diplomacy in Spain had nowise diminished the Pope's confidence in his good service and attachment to his person.
Alinari
HAIR DRESSING IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Detail from the fresco by Pisanello in S. Anastasia of Verona
In the Cortegiano of Castiglione we are furnished with an elaborate, and in the main faithful, delineation of the men, the manners, and the accomplishments which rendered the court of Urbino a model for his age, and also with an interesting picture of the immediate circle which Guidobaldo and his estimable Duchess formed around them. We have drawn upon it amply for this portion of our volumes, but the notices which it affords of the Duke are of the most vague and disappointing character. This deficiency would be of little consequence, did the accounts which the same author has left in a Latin letter to Henry VIII. do full justice to his early patron. But from one whose opportunities of collecting ample and authentic particulars were unusual, the passing allusions to many momentous incidents are truly unsatisfactory. His details of scholarship and accomplishments would be more valuable, if divested of an air of exaggeration which even solemn asseverations of veracity scarcely remove. With all their faults, these are preferable to the compilation of Bembo, to which we shall in due time more particularly advert. Those who wade through its laboured and redundant expletives will probably come to the conclusion that Castiglione has preserved whatever they contain worthy of notice.
The Count was a finished gentleman, in an age when that character included a variety of mental acquirements, as well as many personal accomplishments. His verses in Latin and Italian breathe a fine spirit of poetry; his letters merit a distinguished place as models of correspondence; his diplomatic address was highly approved by the sovereigns whom he served, as well as by those to whom he was accredited; he has been complimented as the delight of his contemporaries, the admiration of posterity.
Giuliano de' Medici was third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and was known in the circle of Urbino by the same appellation. Born in 1478, he passed at that court several years of his family's exile from Florence; nor was he ungrateful for the splendid hospitality he there enjoyed, for, while he lived, his influence with his brother, Leo X., averted those designs against the dukedom, which were directed to his own aggrandisement. After the restoration of the Medici, Leo confided to him the government of Florence, which he endeavoured to administer in the spirit of his father, and succeeded in gaining the good will of the people. But the Pope was not satisfied with the re-establishment of his race as sovereigns of that republic; and the fine qualities and vast ideas of Giuliano suggested him as a fit instrument of further grasping schemes. To realise these, Leo coquetted between France and Spain, and, like his predecessors, sacrificed the peace of Italy. The prizes which he successively proposed for Giuliano, who, by resigning Florence into the hands of his nephew Lorenzo, the heir-male of his house, was free to accept whatever sovereignty might be had, were the duchy of Milan, a state in Eastern Lombardy and Ferrara, or the crown of Naples. In June, 1515, the Pontiff conferred on him the insignia of gonfaloniere and captain-general of the Church; but he was prevented from active service by a fever which cut him off in the following March, when only thirty-eight, not without suspicion of poison at the hands of his nephew Lorenzo. His name is enshrined in Bembo's prose and Ariosto's verse, whilst his tomb by Michael Angelo in the Medicean Chapel, which Rogers, with a quaint but happy antithesis, calls "the most real and unreal thing which ever came from the chisel," is one of the glories of art.[*41] Shortly before his death he had married Filiberta of Savoy, whose nephew, Francis I., created him Duke of Nemours, and, had his life been prolonged, would probably have aided him to further aggrandisement.