Castiglione, Baldassare

Castiglione, Baldassare

Baldassare Castiglione, detail of a portrait by Raphael, 1516; in the Louvre, Paris

(credit: Giraudon-Art Resource/EB Inc.)

(born Dec. 6, 1478, Casatico, near Mantua—died Feb. 2, 1529, Toledo) Italian diplomat, courtier, and writer. Born into a noble family, he was attached to the courts of Mantua and Urbino and later entered papal service. He is remembered for The Courtier (1528). Written in the form of a philosophical dialogue, it describes the conduct of the perfect courtier, the qualities of a noble lady, and the ideal relationships between the courtier and his prince. Immediately successful in Italy and beyond, it became a manual for those aspiring to aristocratic manners during the Renaissance.

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Castiglione, Baldassare

(1478–1529) author of The Courtier, Renaissance bible of etiquette. [Ital. Lit.: Plumb, 316–319]

See : Courtesy

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Castiglione, Baldassare

Born Dec. 6, 1478, in Casatico, near Mantua; died Feb. 2, 1529, in Toledo, Spain. Italian writer.

Castiglione’s best-known work is The Courtier (books 1–4, 1528), a treatise in dialogue form. In the spirit of late humanism, Castiglione enumerated the qualities of the ideal courtier, or, in a broader sense, of the well-brought-up, broadly educated man with a developed personality. This ideal was current throughout Europe in the 16th and early 17th centuries and was reflected in literature.

WORKS

Opère, a cura di C Cordie.Milan-Naples [1960].
In Russian translation:
“Iz ‘Knigi o pridvornom.’ “In Khrestomatiia po zarubezhnoi literature. Epokha Vozrozhdeniia, vol. 1. Compiled by B. I. Purishev. Moscow, 1959.

REFERENCES

De Sanctis, F. Istoriia itaVianskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1964.Rossi, M. B. Castiglione. Bari, 1946.