DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36838#0014
PREFACE
viii
poraries with one accord exclaimed, was a living
example of his ideal courtier, the perfect knight of
his own dreams. ' I am not surprised/ wrote Vittoria
Colonna, when the Count sent her his manuscript,
' that you have described a perfect courtier, since you
had only to hold up a mirror before yourself and
consider your external and internal qualities/ And
although Castiglione himself modestly disclaimed any
pretence at self-portraiture, there certainly was in
his case, as in that of most persons, an evident cor-
respondence between what the man admired and
what he was. ' I will not deny/ he writes naively,
that I have striven to attain those qualities which I
desired to see in my courtier/ Just as Aristotle
defined the virtuous act as that which the good and
great man does, so Castiglione maintained that the
perfect gentleman must frame his own canons of
moral taste, and that his instinct must in the final
resort determine what right conduct is.
In his own person Count Baldassare affords the
most brilliant example of the union of chivalry and
scholarship, a type which always flourished on Italian
soil. Many other instances might he named—Luigi
da Porto, the brave Vicentine who wrote the story
of Romeo and Juliet; Niccolo da Correggio, the
condottiere and playwright; the Milanese cavalier,
Gaspare Visconti. But of all that gallant company
Castiglione was the brightest and the best. In his
threefold capacity of soldier, statesman, and scholar,
he holds a foremost place among the most distin-
guished figures of the sixteenth century. He was
employed by Popes and monarchs on important
missions, and enjoyed the favour of Leo X. and
Clement VII., of Francis 1. and Charles V. Both
at the courts of Mantua and Urbino and in the larger
viii
poraries with one accord exclaimed, was a living
example of his ideal courtier, the perfect knight of
his own dreams. ' I am not surprised/ wrote Vittoria
Colonna, when the Count sent her his manuscript,
' that you have described a perfect courtier, since you
had only to hold up a mirror before yourself and
consider your external and internal qualities/ And
although Castiglione himself modestly disclaimed any
pretence at self-portraiture, there certainly was in
his case, as in that of most persons, an evident cor-
respondence between what the man admired and
what he was. ' I will not deny/ he writes naively,
that I have striven to attain those qualities which I
desired to see in my courtier/ Just as Aristotle
defined the virtuous act as that which the good and
great man does, so Castiglione maintained that the
perfect gentleman must frame his own canons of
moral taste, and that his instinct must in the final
resort determine what right conduct is.
In his own person Count Baldassare affords the
most brilliant example of the union of chivalry and
scholarship, a type which always flourished on Italian
soil. Many other instances might he named—Luigi
da Porto, the brave Vicentine who wrote the story
of Romeo and Juliet; Niccolo da Correggio, the
condottiere and playwright; the Milanese cavalier,
Gaspare Visconti. But of all that gallant company
Castiglione was the brightest and the best. In his
threefold capacity of soldier, statesman, and scholar,
he holds a foremost place among the most distin-
guished figures of the sixteenth century. He was
employed by Popes and monarchs on important
missions, and enjoyed the favour of Leo X. and
Clement VII., of Francis 1. and Charles V. Both
at the courts of Mantua and Urbino and in the larger