The Book of the Courtier (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Baldesar Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier is the High Renaissance in microcosm. It is the portrait of a group of leading thinkers and wits gathered together in the Palace of Urbino in March 1507, playing a game where their task is to delineate the perfect courtier. In their conversations about courtliness they range from chivalry to humanist debates about language, literature, painting and sculpture, to the art of conversation and the telling of jokes, the role and dignity of women, the delicate job of guiding willful princes, and finally to love and its transcendent form in pure spirit. The paradox of Baldesar Castiglione's life is that he was held such high esteem while his career was that of an undistinguished soldier and a diplomat who could rarely achieve his goals. it was the style not the substance of his career that had won him Charles V's accolade of "one of the finest gentleman in the world." He was at the heart of a network of courtiers and artists, and he was unequaled in the deployment of all the symbols of a refined courtly and diplomatic life. In short, his life was a work of art.