Letter to Leo X about the restoration of the monuments of ancient Rome
During the course of 1519, finding himself at the papal court in Rome, as extraordinary ambassador for the Gonzagas, Castiglione wrote together with his friend Raffaello, jointly, an open letter to Pope Leone X about the identification and safeguard of the monuments of ancient Rome. Other humanists also participated in this work, assisting the two authors in the search for ancient ruins, (Angelo Colocci, Fabio Calvo, Andrea Fulvio, Ludovico Degli Arrighi). On the one hand they lamented the barbaric devastations, that had definitively compromised the conservation of the classical patrimony; and on the other hand, they celebrated the continuity between ancient and modern Rome, that seemed to be returning to its highest splendours.
Raffaello was responsible for the general inspiration of the architectural, artistic and technical content of the text, and Castiglione for the stylistic elaboration and researching images and words: both having the same aesthetic principles and cultural sensibility that the letter globally presupposed. The work was the result of “un livello di collaborazione strettissimo, quale raramente si può riscontrare fra due intellettuali, ed esperti di campi diversi” (a very close collaboration, as has rarely been seen between two experts and intellectual from different fields)(C. Vecce, La “Lettera a Leone X” tra Raffaello e Castiglione, “Giornale storico della letteratura italiana”, 173, 1996, 537): only a continued exchange with Raffaello enabled Castiglione to reproduce exactly his thoughts, but proceeding at every step to integrate and fuse his own ideas with those of his friend.
The letter was aimed at celebrating the cataloguing of the classical patrimony, and its ideological layout rested on the exposition of a general programme of classical inspiration, as a model to follow. It is a concept the exposition and defence of which, inevitably, obliged Castiglione to tone down to a certain extent his commitment a modern style (the variety of ‘manners’ and the inexhaustible progress of the arts) on which he d on the other hand, his more outspoken thoughts (as can be seen, for example, in the chapters Cortegiano that deal with the ‘question of language’).
