Review of 'The Book of the Courtier', by Baldassare Castiglione

On a chilly evening in early March 1507, high in the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy, a group of cultivated gentlemen and ladies sit around the fire in the audience chamber of the Duchess of Urbino discussing the qualities of the perfect courtier. Such is the setting of one of the most celebrated books of the Italian Renaissance, The Book of the Courtier ('Il libro del cortegiano') by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), which was an international best-seller for a century after its first publication in 1528. The author, a minor nobleman from Mantua, was a humanistically-educated diplomat who served at the courts of northern Italy for most of his life, ending his career in Spain as Pope Clement VII's 'nuncio' to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.