The Book of the Courtier — Baldassare Castiglione
The Book of the Courtier, by Count Baldesar Castiglione You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Book of the Courtier Author : conte Baldassarre Castiglione Translator : Leonard Eckstein Opdycke Release date : April 8, 2022 [eBook #67799] Most recently updated: October 18, 2024 Language : English Original publication : United Kingdom: Duckworth & Co., 1901 Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67799 Credits : KD Weeks, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup. The cover image has been constructed from the portrait of Castiglione and key information from the title page and is placed in the public domain. Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text. THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER BY COUNT BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE COUNT OF NOVILLARA 1478-1529 Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 11.505) of the portrait in the Louvre, painted in 1516 by Raphael (1483-1520). The original belonged to Charles I of England, after whose death it was bought by a Dutch collector and copied by Rubens. Later it became the property of Cardinal Mazarin, from whose heirs it was acquired for Louis XIV of France. The medallion on the title-page is from a photograph, specially made by Mansell, of a cast, kindly furnished by T. Whitcombe Greene, Esq., of an anonymous medal in his collection at Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire. See the late Alfred Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens , ii, 100, no. 10. THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER BY COUNT BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE (1528) TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN AND ANNOTATED BY LEONARD ECKSTEIN OPDYCKE WITH SEVENTY-ONE PORTRAITS AND FIFTEEN AUTOGRAPHS REPRODUCED BY EDWARD BIERSTADT LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1902 Copyright 1901, by Leonard Eckstein Opdycke The Book of the Courtier was written, partly at Urbino and partly at Rome, between the years 1508 and 1516, and was first printed at the Aldine Press, Venice, in the month of April, 1528. There have since been published more than one hundred and forty editions, a list of which will be found at page 417 of this volume. The first Spanish version, by Juan Boscan Almogaver , was issued at Barcelona in 1534; the first French version, by Jacques Colin , was issued at Paris in 1537; the first English version, by Thomas Hoby , was issued at London in 1561; the first Latin version, by Hieronymus Turler , was issued at Wittenberg in 1561; the first German version, by Lorenz Kratzer , was issued at Munich in 1566. The present edition consists of five hundred numbered copies, of which this is No. The Book of the Courtier, by Count Baldesar Castiglione TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE The popularity long enjoyed by this old book, the place that it holds in Italian literature, and the fact that it is almost inaccessible to English readers, seem to furnish sufficient reason for a new translation. The art of the Italian Renaissance delights us by its delicate and gentle beauty, and yet we know that life during this period was often gross and violent. To understand this, we must remember that art is more the expression of the ideal than of the actual, and that men’s ideals are loftier than their practice. Castiglione gives utterance to the finest aspirations of his time. His pages will lack interest only when mankind ceases to be interesting to man, and will reward study so long as the past shall continue to instruct the present and the future. The few deviations that the present translator has ventured to make from the letter of the Italian text are merely verbal, and were deemed needful to render its meaning clear. The notes that he offers are intended to explain obscure passages and to relieve the reader from the tedium of searching in books of reference. Perhaps no one will regard it as inopportune to be reminded of what all may have known but few are able to remember with precision. Students who may wish to learn from what Greek and Latin sources Castiglione derived material are referred to Professor Vittorio Cian’s admirable edition. The translator desires to express his thanks for the friendly encouragement that he has received from Miss Grace Norton, at whose suggestion his task was undertaken. He is indebted to Dr. Luigi Roversi and Signor Leopoldo Jung for their patient aid, and to Signor Alessandro Luzio and many other scholars, in Italy and elsewhere, for the kindness with which they have helped him to gather portraits and bibliographical data. He gratefully acknowledges, also, his frequent use of Professor Cian’s erudite labours, of John Addington Symonds’s Renaissance in Italy , and of James Dennistoun’s Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino . The Book of the Courtier, by Count Baldesar Castiglione CONTENTS (The Arabic numerals given below refer to the numbered paragraphs into which it has long been customary to divide the work) Page LIST OF PLATES xi INTERLOCUTORS xiv THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATORY LETTER 1 Reasons for writing the book, and for at first delaying and afterwards hastening its publication. Lament at the recent death of several persons mentioned in the book. Answer to three objections: that the book was not written in the lan