Obligations and functions of correspondence

Castiglione usually started writing a personal letter moved by one of two preoccupations: giving a diplomatic account of an event he had witnessed; participating in the solution of a domestic problem, regarding his person, his possessions, his relatives. But, underlying both, there was always his taste for describing and telling stories, the pleasure of continuing conversations with often distant interlocutors. Even during the most dramatic moments of political dealings or family problems, Baldassarre was always a gentleman, curious about the world that surrounded him, careful not to let preoccupations and suffering suffocate personal affections and intimate ties. This is why he became one of the most prolific letter writers in the history of Italian literature: due to his strenuous desire to keep contacts alive (with his mother and family, with the court of his princes, with the court of Rome), due to the yearning to keep people up to date and in turn be kept up to date.

Three topics, especially in his letters to his mother, stand out as preferred subjects to write about: money, arms and horses, clothing. On this last point, Castiglione assailed his mother with continuous petulant requests (to receive indications and the money necessary not to look out of place on the world scene), and informed her of the new fashions favoured in the courts where he was. He seemed to live in a world, both in Urbino and in Roma, characterised by a voracity for things and money, that forced him to spend money continuously and exaggeratedly, which his mother, used to a rural economy and steeped in her own Lombard concreteness, continuously tried to mediate.

Two opposing fears ran through his letters: on the one hand the fear of the shame of appearing inferior to others, on the other the obsession that the salaries he deserved with his services were insufficient for his needs. Castiglione, from this point of view, turned out to be a refined and exquisite expert on cloths and materials, of metals and horses, capable of extracting form every detail precise information regarding rank, power and wealth of the individual displaying it. The sumptuous clothes he displays in the portrait by Raffaello, and the chapters of the Libro del Cortegiano on the subject of clothing and fashion are therefore a reflection of a real preoccupation.