Note 397 page 204. Isabella d’Este, (born 1474; died 1539), was the oldest child of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and Eleanora of Aragon. Having had Mario Equicola as preceptor, she married the Marquess Gianfrancesco Gonzaga (see note 446) in 1490, her early betrothal to whom prevented her from becoming the wife of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, who soon afterwards married her sister Beatrice. At Mantua she continued her literary and artistic training, and her court became one of the brightest and most active centres of Italian culture. The chief poets and painters of the time laboured for her or were her friends. Being for years in her husband’s service, Castiglione knew her closely, maintained a frequent exchange of letters with her, and is only one of many who praise her beauty, her intellect, and her moral qualities; she may be regarded as the most splendid incarnation of the Renaissance ideal of woman. Her long friendship with her sister-in-law, “My lady Duchess,” has been already mentioned. Some interesting details have survived as to her manner of ordering a picture. Having chosen a subject, she had it set forth in writing by some humanist of her court. These specifications were then given to the painter chosen for the purpose, and he was furnished with minute directions as to the placing of the figures and the distribution of light, and required to make a preliminary sketch. As the painting was often intended for a specific space, she took great care to secure the exact dimensions desired, by providing two pieces of ribbon to show the precise height and breadth of the picture. Isabella’s brilliant career, and especially her close relations with the chief men of her day and her weighty influence upon contemporary politics, are the subject of many scholarly volumes and interesting articles written jointly by Alessandro Luzio of Mantua and Rodolfo Renier of Turin.

Note 398 page 204. Beatrice d’Este, (born 1475; died 1497), married Ludovico Sforza, Duke Regent of Milan, in the same year (1491) in which his niece Anna Sforza married Beatrice’s brother Alfonso, the future husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Younger, apparently less beautiful, and certainly less accomplished than her sister Isabella, Beatrice encouraged her husband’s patronage of art and letters, and took part in his turbid political schemes. It will perhaps never be determined precisely to what extent she was responsible for his treatment of his young nephew and of the latter’s wife (see note 396), and for the disasters to Italy that ensued, but she is known to have exercised a great ascendency over her husband’s mind, and he is said to have spent at her tomb the last night before his final capture and downfall. After the expulsion of the French from Italy in 1512, her sons Maximilian and Francesco Maria successively held the duchy for a time, until it passed into the hands of Spain in 1535. For an account of her life, the reader is referred to Mrs. Henry Ady’s recently published “Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan; a Study of the Renaissance,” which owes much to the labours of Luzio and Renier.

Note 399 page 205. Eleanora of Aragon, (born 1450; died 1493), was the elder sister of the Beatrice who married Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. A projected union with Ludovico Sforza (who afterwards married her daughter) having been abandoned, she became in 1473 the wife of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara, and bore him two daughters and four sons. Other contemporary accounts confirm the praise bestowed upon her by Castiglione, and show her to have been a woman of rare merit, manly courage and enlightened culture. Fond of music, and herself a player upon the harp, she seems to have been a discriminating patroness of art and letters, and at the same time to have taken an active share in the serious cares of government, especially when her husband was absent or disabled. A pleasant glimpse of her character is gained from a letter written by her to the duke’s treasurer on behalf of a certain Neapolitan engineer, who had rendered important services but had fallen ill and was in want. “You will see what this poor man’s needs are. You know with what devotion he has served us, nor are you ignorant who sent him to us,—a circumstance worthy of consideration. It would ill become us so to treat him in his sickness as to give him cause for complaint against us. You must know what his pay is. See, then, what can be done, and arrange for helping him.” She did not live to witness the downfall of her family in Naples.

Note 400 page 205. Isabella del Balzo, (died 1533), was a daughter of the Prince of Altamura, and the wife of Federico III of Naples (see note 401). When her husband lost his crown in 1501, she (together with the faithful Sannazaro) accompanied him to France, and shared his exile there until his death in 1504. Being, by the terms of a treaty between Louis XII and Ferdinand the Catholic, compelled to leave France, she and her four children took refuge, first with her sister Antonia at Gazzuolo, and then at Ferrara, where she was kindly treated and maintained by her husband’s nephew Duke Alfonso d’Este. Here she spent the last twenty-five years of her life, but at times in such poverty that when Julius II placed Ferrara under the ban of the Church, she obtained special permission to have religious services performed in her house, on the plea that she had not the means wherewith to leave the city.

Note 401 page 205. Federico III, (born 1452; died 1504), was a son of Ferdinand I of Naples, a younger brother of Alfonso II, and an uncle of his immediate predecessor, Ferdinand II. Having taken part in the weak resistance offered to Charles VIII’s invasion of Naples in 1494, he became king on the early death of his nephew in October 1496, and seems to have tried to keep aloof from the turbulent schemes in which Alexander VI sought to involve him. After another vain attempt to withstand the invasion of Louis XII, and having been shamefully betrayed by the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, to both of whom he had appealed for aid, he retired with his wife and children to the island of Ischia (which furnished refuge at the same time to his widowed sister Beatrice, ex-Queen of Hungary, and to his widowed niece Isabella, ex-Duchess of Milan), ceded his crown to Louis XII in exchange for 30,000 ducats and the Countship of Maine, and spent the last three years of his life in France.

Note 402 page 205. Federico’s eldest son Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, was besieged in Taranto during the Franco-Spanish invasion which resulted in his father’s downfall. On a sworn promise to set him free, he surrendered to the Great Captain (see note 239), but was treacherously detained and sent as a prisoner to Spain, where he was treated by Ferdinand the Catholic with almost royal honours. He continued to reside in Spain, and on the death of his mother in 1533, he was joined at Valencia by his two sisters.

Note 403 page 205. The reference here is probably to the siege of Pisa by the Florentines in 1499, which was finally abandoned owing in part at least to the bravery of the Pisan women. Castiglione himself was the author of some Latin verses celebrating an incident of the siege.

Note 404 page 205. Tomyris was in fact queen of the Massagetæ, who were a nomadic people allied to the Scythians and dwelt north-east of the Caspian Sea. Herodotus relates that Cyrus the Great sent her an offer of marriage, and on being refused, invaded her kingdom and captured her son, but was finally defeated and slain, 529 B.C. The Artemisia referred to in the text is probably not the Queen of Halicarnassus (who fought on the Persian side at Salamis in 480 B.C.), but rather the sister-consort and successor of King Mausolus of Caria, a state on the western coast of Asia Minor. On her husband’s death in 352 B.C., she reigned two years until she pined away for grief. The monument, Mausoleum, erected by her to his memory at Halicarnassus, was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world—the others being: the Egyptian pyramids, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the walls and hanging gardens of Babylon, Phidias’s statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Colossus at Rhodes, and the lighthouse at Alexandria. Zenobia, an Arab by birth, was the second wife of Odenathus, King of Palmyra, which lay to the east of Syria. On the death of her husband, about 266 A.D., she acted as regent for her sons and seems to have shown great talent for war as well as for the arts of wise administration; but in her effort to extend her sway over the entire East, she was defeated by the Emperor Aurelian, and adorned his triumph in golden chains at Rome. She was allowed to spend the remainder of her life in dignified retirement at Tibur (Tivoli). Semiramis was the legendary daughter of the Syrian goddess Derketo, and with her husband Ninus was regarded as the founder of Nineveh. On his death she assumed the government of Assyria, built the city of Babylon and its wonderful gardens, conquered Egypt, etc. To her the Greeks ascribed nearly everything marvellous in the East. Her name appears in inscriptions as that of the consort of an Assyrian ruler who reigned 811-782 B.C. Cleopatra, (69-30 B.C.), was directly descended in the eighth generation from Ptolemy I, the most noted of Alexander the Great’s generals and the founder of the Egyptian dynasty that ended with her life. Her establishment as sole ruler, to the exclusion of her two brothers, was due to the favour of Julius Cæsar, who is said to have acknowledged the paternity of her son Cæsarion, ultimately put to death by order of Augustus. Her love of literature, and the refinement of her luxury, show her to have been no mere voluptuary.

Note 405 page 206. Sardanapalus,—Assurbanipal, the Asnapper of the Old Testament,—ruled over Assyria from 668 to 626 B.C., and was the last monarch of the empire reputed to have been founded by Ninus and Semiramis. His name became a by-word for effeminate luxury, but in recent times the discovery and study of the larger part of the tablets composing his library, prove him to have been a vigorous king and an intelligent patron of art and literature.

Note 406 page 207. In his life of Alexander, Plutarch extols the magnanimity with which the youthful monarch treated the captive mother, wife and two daughters, of Darius, the last King of Persia, whom he had utterly defeated in the battle of Arbela, 331 B.C. In furtherance of his plan of uniting his European and Asiatic subjects into one people, Alexander afterwards married Bersine, the elder of Darius’s two daughters.

Note 407 page 208. This incident is narrated in Valerius Maximus’s “Memorable Sayings and Doings” as having occurred in the first Spanish campaign of Scipio Africanus Maximus, 210 B.C., when that commander was in his twenty-fourth year.

Note 408 page 208. This story of the Platonist philosopher Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.) is derived from the same source last cited. His teaching was characterized by the loftiest morality, and included a declaration that it comes to the same thing whether we cast longing eyes, or set our feet, upon the property of others. The ‘very beautiful woman’ of the text is variously mentioned as Phryne and Laïs, rival hetairai said to have served as models to the painter Apelles.

Note 409 page 208. Cicero’s version of this anecdote (De Officiis, i, 40) mentions Sophocles as the ‘someone’ rebuked by Pericles.

Note 410 page 210. The Italians still say:

Note 411 page 213. The present translator prefers not to offer an English version of the following passage, but to reprint it, line for line, from the Aldine folio of 1528:

The only other instance in which the translator has suppressed any part of the text is in line 10 of page 212, where the Italian word ignuda is not rendered.

Note 412 page 214. The event occurred in 1501, six years before the date of the Courtier dialogues.

Note 413 page 214. The Volturno flows through Capua.

Note 414 page 214. Gazuolo or Gazzuolo is now the name of an Italian commune, containing less than 5,000 inhabitants, and situated eleven miles west of Mantua.

Note 415 page 214. The Oglio is a river of Lombardy about 135 miles long; it traverses the Lake of Iseo, and joins the Po some ten miles south-west of Mantua.

Note 416 page 214. In two earlier MS. versions of The Courtier, the passage ‘Now from this ... even her name is unknown’ reads: “Then messer Pietro Bembo said: ‘In truth, if I knew this noble peasant girl’s name, I would compose an epitaph for her.’ ‘Do not stop for that,’ said messer Cesare; ‘her name is Maddalena Biga, and if the Bishop’s death had not occurred, that bank of the Oglio’” etc.

With slight variations this story is narrated as fact in a letter of Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), from whose tales Shakspere took plots for his plays. The letter gives the poor girl’s name as Giulia and that of the Bishop of Mantua as Ludovico Gonzaga, and relates that, as it was unlawful to bury her remains in consecrated soil, he caused them to be deposited in the piazza, intending to place them in a bronze sarcophagus mounted on a marble column. The letter also affirms that the ravisher was one of the bishop’s valets.

Note 417 page 215. This was Ludovico Gonzaga, (born 1458; died 1511), a son of the Marquess Ludovico of Mantua and Barbara of Brandenburg, and a younger brother of “my lady Duchess’s” father. Made Bishop of Mantua in 1483, he continued to hold that office until his death, and appears from various contemporary documents to have been a liberal and wise prince. The last years of his life were spent at Gazzuolo, which he made a centre of culture, art and learning. His brother Gianfrancesco was husband of the Antonia del Balzo mentioned above, note 400. For particulars regarding him, see an article by Rossi in the Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, xiii, 305.

Note 418 page 215. The basilica of St. Sebastian, on the Appian Way, dates from the 4th century, was built over the most famous of the catacombs, and enjoyed an exceptional veneration during the Middle Ages. The saint was a young military tribune born in Gaul, suffered martyrdom under Diocletian about the year 288, and was buried in the catacombs of Callistus. St. George and he were the favourite saints of chivalry, and may be regarded as the martial Castor and Pollux of Christian myth.

Note 419 page 216. Felice della Rovere, (died about 1536), was a natural daughter of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (afterwards Julius II) and a certain Lucrezia, the wife of Bernardo de Cuppis (or Coppi) da Montefolco; thus “my lord Prefect” of The Courtier was her own cousin. In 1506 she became the second wife of the elderly and eccentric Giangiordano Orsini, and the ancestress of the Dukes of Bracciano. Her name often occurs in contemporary documents, not only on account of her lofty position but because of her love of art and letters. Both Castiglione and Giancristoforo Romano were her friends. The incident mentioned in the text seems not to be referred to elsewhere. Savona, a seaport on the western Riviera, is near the birthplace of Felice’s great-uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, who was the founder of the della Rovere family.

Note 420 page 216. Duke Guidobaldo’s impotence is said to have given rise to the project of a divorce for his duchess.

Note 421 page 218. The reference here is to Ovid’s Ars Amandi, which enjoyed an extraordinary reputation during the Renaissance, and from which this passage is largely derived.

Note 422 page 220. The Laura to whom Petrarch consecrated no less than three hundred and eighteen sonnets, is usually regarded as identical with Laure, the daughter of a certain knight of Avignon, Audibert de Noves. If this identification be correct, she was born in 1308, married Hughes de Sade in 1325, became the mother of eleven children, and died in 1348. In 1533 Francis I caused her reputed tomb to be opened, and found in it a small box which contained a medal bearing a woman’s profile, and a parchment on which was a sonnet signed by Petrarch.

Note 423 page 220. The so-called “Song of Solomon” is now thought to be the work of a period later than Solomon’s and to contain no mystic meaning.

Note 424 page 222. In the old romance, “Amadis of Gaul,” Isola Ferma is an enchanted island, with a garden at the entrance to which stands an arch surmounted by the statue of a man holding a trumpet to his mouth. Whenever an unfaithful lover attempts to pass, the trumpet emits a dreadful sound with fire and smoke, and drives the culprit back; while it welcomes all true lovers with sweetest music.

Note 425 page 228. Here again the reference is of course to “my lady Duchess.”

Note 426 page 235. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, first published by Aldus in 1499, was written by Francesco Colonna, a Dominican friar of Venice, who died an old man in 1527. The book is rare, and is said to be an allegorical romance full of lascivious erudition, and written in a pedantically affected mixture of Italian, Latin, and Venetian patois.

Note 427 page 237. Ars Amandi, i, 597-602.

Note 428 page 237. Ars Amandi, i, 569-72.

Note 429 page 243. Gaspar Pallavicino died in 1511, at the age of twenty-five.

Note 430 page 243. Cesare Gonzaga died in 1512, at about the age of thirty-seven. See note 43.

Note 431 page 244. Federico Fregoso was named Archbishop of Salerno in 1507, very soon after the date of the Courtier dialogues; see note 41.

Ludovico da Canossa became Bishop of Bayeux in 1520; see note 44.

Ottaviano Fregoso became Doge of Genoa in 1513; see note 11.

Bibbiena was made cardinal, and Bembo was appointed papal secretary, in 1513; see notes 10 and 42.

Giuliano de’ Medici was created Duke of Nemours in 1515. As he died in 1516, Castiglione’s use of the present tense (‘that greatness where now he is’) is inconsistent with the mention of Canossa as Bishop of Bayeux. See note 9.

Francesco Maria della Rovere succeeded to the dukedom in 1508; see note 3.

Note 432 page 244. Eleanora Gonzaga, (born about 1492; died 1543), was the eldest daughter of the Marquess Gianfrancesco of Mantua and Isabella d’Este. In 1505 Castiglione negotiated her union with Francesco Maria della Rovere, but the marriage did not take place until Christmas Eve 1509, upon which occasion Bembo wrote to Federico Fregoso that he had never seen a comelier, merrier or sweeter girl, and that her amiable disposition and surprisingly precocious judgment won general admiration. She seems to have maintained affectionate relations with her aunt and predecessor (“my lady Duchess” of The Courtier), whose fame quite outshone her own, and to have exhibited in after life no little strength of character. She is said to have excluded, and even to have expelled, great ladies of questionable morality from her court. Titian’s portrait (1537) represents her in middle age, but his pictures, La Bella and Das Mädchen im Pelz, as well as several of his Venus heads, are generally regarded as idealized presentations of her more youthful face.

Note 433 page 249. The Piazza d’Agone occupied the site of the ancient Circus Agonalis, which derived its name from the Agonalia, a festival held twice a year in honour of Janus. Before, during and long after Castiglione’s time, it was a centre of festivals, amusements and spectacles at the carnival season. It is now called the Piazza Navona.

Note 434 page 250. The famous Athenian commander Cimon, (died 449 B.C.), was the son of the still more famous Miltiades. His victories repulsed the last Persian aggressions and consolidated the Athenian supremacy. Although an admirer of Spartan institutions, he seems to have been of a somewhat indulgent disposition. The Scipio here referred to, is probably Publius Cornelius Scipio the Elder, who was the victor over Hannibal and died 183 B.C. Lucullus is cited earlier in The Courtier as an instance of a soldier with studious tastes; see note 113.

Note 435 page 250. The Theban general and statesman Epaminondas, (died 362 B.C.), is said by Plutarch to have enjoyed the instruction of the Pythagorean philosopher Lysis of Tarentum, who was driven out of Italy in the persecution of his sect, and found refuge at Thebes.

Note 436 page 250. Agesilaus was King of Sparta 398-361 B.C. Although small and lame, he was the greatest Spartan commander, and became famous for his victories against the Persian and Greek enemies of his country. Xenophon, historian, essayist and disciple of Socrates, was banished from Athens about the time of Socrates’s death (399 B.C.), accompanied Agesilaus into Asia, and wrote a panegyric upon him, regarded by Cicero as more glorious than all the statues erected to kings.

The reverence and love of Scipio the Younger (about 185-129 B.C.) for the Rhodian Stoic philosopher Panaætius (about 180-111 B.C.) is frequently mentioned by Cicero, from whose De Oratore Castiglione seems to have taken this whole passage.

Note 437 page 252. In Greek mythology Epimetheus (Afterthought) and Prometheus (Forethought) were sons of the Titan Iapetus and the ocean nymph Clymene. Angered by a deceit practised upon him by Prometheus, Zeus withheld from men the use of fire; but Prometheus stole fire from heaven and brought it to earth in a hollow reed. For this offence he was chained to a rock where an eagle preyed daily upon his liver (which grew again in the night), until he was finally liberated by Hercules. As compensation for the boon of fire, Zeus sent Pandora (the first woman, endowed with beauty, cunning and other attributes designed to bring woe to man) to be the wife of Epimetheus. Although warned by his brother, Epimetheus accepted her, with the result that she set free the evils which Prometheus had concealed in a box. In a later form of the legend, she received from the gods a box containing the blessings of life, and on her being moved by curiosity to open the box, all of them (save hope) escaped and were lost.

Note 438 page 263. Bias was born at Priene in Asia Minor, and lived in the 6th century B.C. He was celebrated for his apothegms and reckoned among the Seven Sages of Greece,—the other six being: Thales of Miletus, Solon of Athens, Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Rhodes, Periander of Corinth, and Pittacus of Mitylene,—all of whom flourished about 600 B.C. The fame of these seven men rested not upon their philosophy, as we use the word, but upon their practical wisdom—the fruit of experience.

Note 439 page 264. Clearchus, (died 353 B.C.), was for twelve years a cruel tyrant, not of Pontus, but of Heraclea (the modern Eregli), a city on the Black Sea about 140 miles east of Constantinople. He is said to have been a pupil of both Plato and Isocrates, the latter of whom represents him as a gentle youth.

Note 440 page 264. Of the dozen or more ancients known to have borne the name Aristodemus, none seem to fit precisely the description given in the text, which is taken from a passage in Plutarch’s “On the Ignorant Prince.” Plutarch may have had in mind a certain tyrant of Megalopolis in the 3d century B.C.

Note 441 page 269. The reference here is to Book V of “The Republic.”

Note 442 page 270. Fregoso here declares for what has been called “that Utopia of the 16th Century—the Governo Misto—a political invention which fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last century.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 306.) In this regard the men of Castiglione’s time, men like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, were only following Plato and Aristotle.

Note 443 page 270. The reference here is to the Cyropædia, i, 6.

Note 444 page 270. Castiglione seems to have in mind the game of tavola reale, which is similar to our backgammon.

Note 445 page 273. Circe’s transformation of some of Ulysses’s companions into swine is narrated in the tenth book of the Odyssey. In Castiglione’s day the term “King of France” was used to signify the acme of royal power.

Note 446 page 274. Gianfrancesco—more commonly called Francesco—Gonzaga, (born 1466; died 1519), was the eldest son of the Marquess Federico of Mantua and Margarita of Bavaria, and a brother of “my lady Duchess.” Having succeeded his father in 1484, he married (1490) Isabella d’Este, to whom he had been betrothed at the age of sixteen. Like his ancestors and most other petty Italian rulers of his time, he was at once condottiere and sovereign prince. He commanded the Italian troops against Charles VIII, and although with an overwhelmingly superior force he failed to block the retreat of the French at Fornovo, he treated that disgraceful affair as a glorious victory, and even caused it to be commemorated by Mantegna in a votive picture now in the Louvre. He served successively as captain of the imperial troops in Italy, as commander of Duke Ludovico Sforza’s army, as viceroy of Naples under Louis XII, etc. He joined the League of Cambray and was taken prisoner by the Venetians. In the general disorders that filled the period of his reign, he and his more brilliant wife had the address to protect his dominions from the ravages of war. Although, as Castiglione’s natural lord, he was asked and gave his consent to the latter’s entry into the Duke of Urbino’s court (1504), he seems to have continued to resent the affair until Castiglione’s return (1516) to his service,—in which the author remained when this part of the text was written. Castiglione’s eulogy was far from undeserved, for to the Marquess’s munificence, no less than to his consort’s taste and enthusiasm, must be ascribed the lustre of their provincial court. Besides being a patron of art and letters, he was also a successful breeder of horses for use both in war and in racing.

Note 447 page 274. The duke is said to have had no small share in planning the palace; his chief architect was one Luciano, a native of Laurana in Dalmatia on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The cost of the structure was about £400,000 sterling. See, besides the authorities cited in note 28, Luzio and Renier’s Mantova e Urbino, (Roux: Turin: 1893), p. 10, note 1.

Note 448 page 274. The ancient basilica of St. Peter’s had become ruinous by 1450, but little was done towards rebuilding it until 1506, when the execution of Bramante’s plan was begun with the solemn laying of the first stone by Julius II on Sunday, 18 April. On the death of Bramante, Raphael was put in charge of the work in 1514, as we have seen (note 98), but, apparently owing to lack of funds, progress was slow until 1534 when Michelangelo’s designs were substituted. The dome was completed in 1590, and the church dedicated in 1626.

Note 449 page 274. This ‘street’ was designed by Bramante to be a kind of triumphal way connecting the Vatican with the Belvedere pavilion. It was to be bordered by palaces, courts, gardens, porticoes, terraces, etc., but the death of Julius II led to the abandonment of the plan.

Note 450 page 274. Pozzuoli (the ancient Puteoli), situated seven miles west of Naples, was originally a Greek city, but became one of the chief commercial ports of the Roman Empire, and a resort of the patrician class. It is noted for its ruins, especially those of a large amphitheatre.

Baja (the ancient Baiæ), on the Gulf of Pozzuoli, was the chief Roman watering place, famous for its luxury, and containing the villas of many celebrated Romans. Its principal antiquities are ruins of baths.

Civita Vecchia lies on the coast about thirty-eight miles north-west of Rome, and was anciently known as Centum Cellæ. The Emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117 A.D.) converted it from a poor village into a great seaport, and of his monuments some remains are still extant.

Porto was a Roman city near the mouths of the Tiber. In Castiglione’s time it had become a marshy island. One of the earliest Italian archæologists, Flavio Biondo, visited the site in 1451, and found there many huge marble blocks ready for building and bearing quarry marks of the imperial period. The Apollo Belvedere was discovered here in 1503.