Family troubles
On 7th April 1520, in Roma, at the age of 37 Raffaello died. Castiglione, who was in Mantua, was deeply moved and perturbed by the premature death of his friend; so to commemorate him, he composed the famous eulogy De morte Raphaelis pictoris, later included in his collection of Latin poems, in which the painter is exalted as the protagonist and interpreter of an extraordinary plan for artistic renovation, capable of elevating modern Rome to the splendours of antiquity. Once again in Rome, around the middle of July, Baldassarre addressed his mother Aloisia with moving words, behind which one could feel the genuine suffering caused by the now irrevocable loss: “I am well, but I do not feel as if I am in Rome, because my poor Raphaello is no longer here: may God welcome his blessed soul” (B. Castiglione, Le lettere, a c. by G. La Rocca, I, Milan 1978, 552).
Just four months later, another bereavement hit Baldassarre, when in Mantua, on 25th August, his wife Ippolita died, not yet twenty, without the comfort of his presence and worn out by the birth of her third child. The event provoked immediate and widespread condolences among those faithful to Mantua, starting with Isabella d’Este and Federico Gonzaga, who charged their common friend Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, in Rome at the time, to inform Castiglione personally of his loss. Thus, on 30th August, Bibbiena wrote in reply to the Marquis Federico: “His pain transfixes him far more internally than is apparent, even though it is very visible, and it is well known that he truly loved his consort, whose memory I do not know how will ever leave him” (V. Cian, Un illustre nunzio pontificio del Rinascimento. Baldassar Castiglione, The Vatican 1951, 91).
For Ippolita Castiglione he wrote an epitaph of distressing beauty, which was transcribed onto her tomb, in the church of S. Maria delle Grazie, outside Mantua.
