The death of the prince
Right from the first meeting, in Rome in December 1503, Castiglione established with Guidubaldo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, a relationship of deep and intimate correspondence, fuelled by the sharing of common ideals, both human and political. For this reason, in June 1504, Baldassarre asked the Marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, permission to enter into the service of the court of Urbino. But, just a few years later, in the night between the 11th and 12th April 1508, Guidubaldo died, squashed by an infirmity that from his youth had tormented him.
This event provoked in Castiglione sincere and intense suffering: facing the premature and bitter death of such a complex personality, full of charm and every gift and virtue, but despite this, so very unfortunate, he interrogated himself about the meaning of human existence and the targets that it should most pursue. These thoughts dominate the pages of the letter to Henry VII, King of England, written between May and July 1508, in which, the day after the loss of Guidubaldo, he proposed a portrait intended to highlight his essential qualities. Guidubaldo was presented as the prototype of the ideal prince: honest, just and peaceful, at ease among books and words more that among arms. Always ill and melancholic, so different to his father Federico, but of firm spirit. Defeated in the body and by his own body, he won through the soul: thanks to his magnanimity and internal conquests, that, as opposed to military ones, no one (not even death) could take away from him. The myth of Guidubaldo runs through the letter to Henry VII from end to end. And the exact same theme is used by Castiglione in the initial chapters of the Libro del Cortegiano, to highlight the positive aspects of the life of the Duke: “la fortuna in ogni suo disegno tanto gli fu contraria che egli rare volte trasse a effetto cosa che desiderasse. E benché in esso fosse il consiglio sapientissimo e l’animo invittissimo, pareva che ciò che incominciava, e nelle armi e in ogni altra cosa, o piccola o grande, sempre male gli succedesse: e di ciò fanno testimonio molte e diverse sue calamità, le quali esso con tanto vigore di animo sempre tollerò, che mai la virtù dalla fortuna non fu superata.” (Fortune in all its forms was so frequently against him that rarely did he succeed in getting what he wanted. And though he was wise and intelligent, it seemed that everything he started, in arms and in any other field, always went wrong for him: and many and different calamities testify this fact, and his vigorous soul always tolerated them, and virtue never overcame fortune) (B. Castiglione, Il Cortigiano, edited by A. Quondam, Milan 2002, I, 15).
