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Biography of Baldassare Castiglione
Name: Baldassare Castiglione
Birth Date: December 6, 1478
Death Date: February 7, 1529
Place of Birth: Casatico, Mantua, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Gender: Male
Occupations: diplomat, author, courtier
Baldassare Castiglione
The Italian author, courtier, and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) is known primarily for his "Book of the Courtier." This work, which portrays the ideal courtier, was a chief vehicle in spreading Italian humanism into England and France.Baldassare Castiglione was born on Dec. 6, 1478, in Casatico in the province of Mantua of an illustrious Lombard family. After receiving a classical education in Mantua and in Milan, he served at the court of the Milanese duke Lodovico Sforza from 1496 to 1499. Castiglione then entered the service of Francesco Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. In 1503 he fought with Gonzaga's forces against the Spanish in Naples. On his way north he visited Rome and Urbino; both cities fascinated him. His request to transfer to the court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro at Urbino was grudgingly granted in 1504 by Gonzaga.At Urbino, Guidobaldo's wife, Elizabetta, presided over the noble company depicted in the Libro del cortegiano(Book of the …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…should carefully avoid any affectation. As in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, there is a certain moral relativism: seeming is frequently more important than being.Only a modest poet in both Italian and Latin, Castiglione wrote a fine sonnet on the ruins of Rome, Superbicolli e voi sacre ruine, which reappears in the Antiquités de Rome of Joachim du Bellay and in Edmund Spenser's Ruines of Rome. His poetry was published in 1760 and his letters in 1769 and 1771. Further Reading The most famous translation of The Book of the Courtier is by Sir Thomas Hoby (1561; many later editions); the most recent and readable, by Charles S. Singleton (1959). Castiglione's contribution to the Renaissance is described in Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Four Lawgivers, Savonarola, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Aretino (1933). See also Julia Cartwright, Baldassare Castiglione, the Perfect Courtier: His Life and Letters, 1478-1529 (2 vols., 1908), and Ernest Hatch Wilkins, A History of Italian Literature (1954).
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