The shadow of Federico
In The Cortegiano the celebration of the myth of Urbino, as an ideal city-state in the political and cultural situation in Italy, between the 15th and 16th Centuries, is connected to the eulogy of the Duke Federico di Montefeltro, father of Guidubaldo, who died on 10th September 1482. His fame, splendid and indelible, reverberates in the magnificence of the palace the construction of which he had supported and promoted. In that sumptuous home, where the conversations evoked in the work take place, everything speaks of him, and his glory constitutes both the background and the raison d’être of the text.
Federico is the prince par excellence, whose paradigmatic qualities Baldassarre, in great synthesis, intends to evoke: the strong and charismatic personality; the vigorous temperament, that lead to the length of his reign and his qualities as a combatant; his vocation as a patron, that lead him to use the money earned in war to finance the arts and peace. Outlining his character Castiglione wants to consign to the reader of The Cortegiano the image of the archetypal founder, the victorious man, master of his own destiny and creator of the splendours of his state, his palace, his family. Thus, with Federico, at the start of the work we have the introduction of the myth of the great leader, prudent, wise and invincible, opulent and liberal.
Right from the 1470s, Federico di Montefeltro received admiration and attention, provoking a proliferation of biographies of varying genre and quality, (in Latin and vulgar tongue, in prose and in verse), that all interrogate themselves on the secret of this magnificent figure. In The Cortegiano, Castiglione gives us an original elaboration of this tradition, wanting to highlight the detail he most wishes to be noticed: the admirable aptitude the Duke had for cultivating simultaneously arms and letters, both an active life and a contemplative one, attenuating the rough and bitter aspects of feudalism by continuously exhibiting the humanist qualities of grace and gentility.
