The death of Guidubaldo
In March 1508, together with his cousin Cesare Gonzaga, Castiglione wrote the Tirsi poem, which was read out at the court of Urbino during the carnival festivities. The text celebrates the splendours of the world of the Montefeltro family gathered around the Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga.
But just a few days later the idyll was shattered. During the night between the 11th and 12th April 1508, in fact, at Fossombrone, where he had moved to together with the Duchess, the Duke Guidubaldo died. Castiglione’s suffering is sincere and intense, as is demonstrated in the first pages of The Cortegiano, in which he sublimates the bitterness over the premature death, so sad, of a personality that was complex and fascinating.
Having transferred the body to Urbino and immediately carried out the funeral rites in the Church of S. Bernardino fuori le mura, where Guidubaldo was buried in front of the mausoleum of his father Federico, the solemn funeral service took place on 2nd May. In the presence of the five bishops of the dukedom, the ceremony was memorable for the pomp of the trappings and due to the unanimously emotional participation of the nobles, subjects, lay and religious alike, gentlemen and common people.
In front of a packed auditorium, before the offertory, “Messer Lodovico [Odasi] da Padova, who had been the Duke’s teacher and secretary ,climbed up to the pulpit and pronounced a sermon in praise of the dead Duke” (thus wrote Benedetto Capilupi in a letter to Isabella d’Este on 7th May 1508); the eulogy, as was referred the day after by Giovanni Gonzaga to the Marquis of Mantua, “lasted for about an hour, and was wonderful, in the opinion of those who are more expert in thesethings than I am” (A. Luzio and R. Renier, Mantova e Urbino. Isabellad’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni familiari e nelle vicende politiche, Turin-Rome 1893,183-185).
Between May and June, Castiglione composed for Henry VII King of England the epistle De vita et gestis Guidubaldi Urbini ducis: a solemn eulogy to the dead Duke, filled with affectionate pity and emotional admiration. This was also an official testimony confirming the alliance that bound London and Urbino, and that Baldassarre himself, with his journey, had contributed to ratifying.
