Virtue and fortune
In The Cortegiano, more directly and explicitly than in other works, Castiglione declares the single reason behind the great charm of Elisabetta Gonzaga: the Duchess of Urbino, to his eyes, is an example of an unfortunate woman who, rather than capitulating to the woes and blows of adverse fortune, in them finds the stimulus for revealing her most hidden virtues. “La fortuna, come ammiratrice di così rare virtù, ha voluto con molte avversità e stimoli di disgrazie scoprire, per fare testimonio che nel tenero petto di una donna, in compagnia di singolare bellezza, possono stare la prudenza e la fortezza di animo, e tutte quelle virtù che ancora nei severi uomini sono rarissime” (Fortune, admiring such rare virtues, inflicted numerous adversities and woes, so as to testify that in the tender breast of woman, combined with such singular beauty, there can be found prudence and strength of character, and all those virtues that are still rare in so many men) (B. Castiglione, Il Cortigiano, edited by A. Quondam, Milan 2002, I, 18).
The toughest blows of fate are those that leave the ingenuity of men, and women, beaten or definitively exalted: this is what Castiglione, drawing strength from Seneca’s stoicism, desires to demonstrate, highlighting the case of Elisabetta, and extracting from her testimony a universal teaching. The same highlighting is used, throughout the work, to connect episodes and characters that Castiglione wants to arrange around the identical assumption: from Ottaviano Fregoso to the ladies of Marseilles, from Camma to Isabella d’Aragona, from Isabella d’Altamura to young lovers. These and other cases are the symptoms of a conceptual attitude typical of Baldassarre, inclined to identify, among the constant features of the history of all ages, how fortune envies virtue, and then the subterfuges that fortune uses to the determent of talent. But, as is confirmed by the parable of Elisabetta, adverse fortune, as a last resort, turns out not to be negative but an advantage, as it serves as a stimulus for a “good” man, that he may not weaken in prosperity and may learn, exercising prudence, how to show his worth despite it.
