The learned prince

In his letter to Henry VII and, more extensively, in the fourth book of The Cortegiano Castiglione developed his own political reflections without measuring their effective translation into reality: through a series of hypotheses, he proposes an ideal utopia, an elevated project, that in itself generates operational energy, as it stimulates emulation. His argument, though filled with historical examples, develops on a theoretical plain, and ignores any aspect that may provoke disillusion or scepticism in the reader. Thus, he recuperates and elaborates from classical tradition, and in particular from Plato and Plutarch, as well as the Bible (Solomon), the model of the savant prince, who governs through reason and not by force.

He longs for the prototype of a prince who is at peace with himself, capable of dominating his every instinct and passion: who would be suited to study, thinking, speculation, researching every branch of knowledge, because only in this manner could a government inspired by wisdom and equilibrium develop. The four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) are expressly indicated as his points of reference, on an operational as well as on an ideological level. Echoing what had already been affirmed by Aristotle in his Politica, Castiglione proposes the figure of the pacifist prince, who resorts to war only as a means of defence against oppression or the tyranny of others, and who exercises his dominion over his subjects following the paradigmatic example of Guidubaldo di Montefeltro, in a gentle and fatherly manner, never being imperious.

Both in the Latin pages of the letter to Henry VII and in the vulgar tongue of The Cortegiano, to put a seal on his meditations Castiglione reiterates that the ideal is not impossible, and the road to perfection, though difficult, can be followed to its end, just as the protagonists of the court of Urbino clearly demonstrate.