The women of the courtesan

The strings that tie biographical reality to a literary work are never straight or direct. Nonetheless, it is important to observe that the third book of The Cortegiano, in which Castiglione commits himself to celebrating the energetic and ennobling prerogatives of female nature, obviously presupposes the experiences of the author. Behind the profile of the perfect court lady, as it is presented in the work, one can see the outline of at least three real women, among the many that Baldassarre, in his real life, had had opportunity to meet and frequent: his mother, Aloisia Gonzaga; the Duchess of Urbino, Elisabetta Gonzaga, to whom he was tied by feelings of intense affection; and lastly, Ippolita Torelli, his wife, protagonist of a matrimonial experience that was as bitterly fleeting, as it was, despite its brevity, luminously happy.

A few documents can be quoted for a rapid verification. In a letter dated November 1504, his mother is presented as the single, unique and constant reference point for all his thoughts and all his affections; in message to Ippolita, from Rome, on 31 August 1519, Baldassarre spoke in the following terms: “Se voi stesti, consorte mia cara, dieceotto giorni che non havestive mie littere, io in quel tempo non steti mai quattro hore che non pensasse di voi. [...] Serebbe bono ch’io volesse che voi anchor vi facesti dire al Papa quanto io amo voi: che certo tutta Roma lo sa, di sorte che ognuno mi dice ch’io sto disperato e di mala voglia, perché non sono con voi, et io non ge lo niego” (If you, my dear consort, remained eighteen days without letters from me, I in that time would not last four hours without thinking of you. [...] I would like it if you had the Pope tell you how much I love you: as certainly the whole of Rome knows it, because everyone tells me that I am desperate and in a bad mood because I am not with you, and I do not deny it) (B. Castiglione, Le lettere, edited by G. La Rocca, I, Milan 1978, 484). The verses that Castiglione wrote while thinking about the far away Duchess during his mission to the court of Henry VII, are of a different tenor but identical significance: “Ecco la bella fronte e ’l dolce nodo, / gli occhi e i labbri formati in Paradiso, / e ’l mento dolcemente in sé diviso, / per man d’Amor composto in dolce modo” (Here is the beautiful forehead and sweet nose, the eyes and lips shaped in Paradise, and the sweet cleft chin, sweetly composed by he hand of love) (B. Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano con una scelta delle opere minori, edited by B. Maier, Turin 1981, 602-603). These texts serve as a minimum demonstration of the sincerity of affection and deep correspondence typical of someone who, like Baldassarre, had found in three women the privileged interlocutors of his existence.