The Book of the Courtier

Part of my reading this week is The Book of the Courtier, the famous 16th-century book of manners written by Baldassare Castiglione (shown above in his equally famous portrait by Raphael, a great friend of his). I picked it up at a used bookstore in town, together with Stendhal's The Red and the Black, for $1.50, which is a pretty awesome deal.

Like Vasari's Lives, the Book of the Courtier is one of those texts with which you can be pretty familiar without ever having read, so thorough has been their osmosis into the cultural ideals of the Renaissance and beyond. Presented as a conversation among the courtiers of the Duke of Urbino, the prescription is pretty simple: the ideal courtier should be able to do just about everything, do it well, and yet be able to make it look like he wasn't trying at all. That last requirement is the quality of sprezzatura, which is usually translated as "nonchalance."

As you would expect in books of this kind, there's lot of advice on what type of musical instruments the courtier should be able to play (strings are fine, but not flutes, because they make you contort your face unattractively), and how it's acceptable to mimic the vocal patterns and gestures of a famous person for laughs, but not their physical deformities (because that's just mean). The part I was just reading admonished gentlemen against the use of "enchantments, charms, sometimes force, sometimes sleeping potions and other such things" in order to, er, "enjoy a lady to the full." Roofies are nothing new, it seems, and neither are creeps.

There were a couple of passages that I marked. First, this one made me feel better about not being able to play chess well:

Signore Gaspare replied: "And what do you say about the game of chess?"

"That is certainly a refined and ingenious recreation," said Federico, "but it seems to me to possess one defect; namely, that it is possible for it to demand too much knowledge, so that anyone who wishes to become an outstanding player must, I think, give it as much time and study as he would to learning some noble science or performing well something or other of importance; and yet for all his pains when all is said and done all he knows is a game. Therefore as far as chess is concerned we reach what is a very rare conclusion: that mediocrity is more to be praised than excellence."

This one just amused me because of the author's obvious contempt for fops and dandies:

"...I don't want him to appear soft and feminine as so many try to do, when they not only curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows but also preen themselves like the most wanton and dissolute creatures imaginable. Indeed, they appear so effeminate and languid in the way they walk, or stand, or do anything at all, that their limbs look as if they are about to fall apart...since Nature has not in fact made them the ladies they want to seem and be, they should be treated not as honest women but as common whores and be driven out from all gentlemanly society, let alone the Courts of great lords."

Methinks Baldassare would not have been over-fond of the metrosexual look!