The death of his wife
The wedding of Castiglione and Ippolita Torelli was celebrated in Mantua on 19th October 1516. The 3rd August their first con Camillo was born. The 17th July 1518 their daughter Anna was born; the 14th August 1520, lastly, their daughter Ippolita came into the world. However, the 25 August Ippolita Torelli died, not yet twenty, probably exhausted by her pregnancies following each other so closely.
Still ignorant of the drama, on 27th August, in Rome, Baldassarre wrote to his mother Aloisia, telling her of his satisfaction and his fears: “Heri, che fu alli 25, hebbi la littera de V.S., nella quale la mi avisava el parto de la mia consorte et el nascimento d’una figliola femina. Nostro S.re Dio ne sia laudato. Vero è ch’io havevo posto un poco de oppenione che dovesse esser maschio: pur questa anchor mi è carissima. [...] Penso che la mia consorte stia bene, perché, se quella febre gli fosse andata inanti, V.S. me lo haria pur avisato” (Yesterday, that was the 25th, I received your letter, in which you informed me that my consort had given birth to a daughter. May the Lord be praised. It is true that I had hoped a little that it might have been a boy: but even this daughter is very dear to me [...] I imagine that my consort is well, also because if her fever had continued you would have informed me about it) (B. Castiglione, Le lettere, edited by G. La Rocca, I, Milan 1978, 587-588).
The terrible news was given to Castiglione by his friend Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, and, as he testified in a letter to Federico Gonzaga, “gli apportò tanto cordoglio et tanto affanno che non fu di noi chi non lagrimasse di pietà” (it procured him so much pain and so much breathlessness that there were none of us that was not crying with pity) (V. Cian, Un illustre nunzio pontificio del Rinascimento. Baldassar Castiglione, The Vatican 1951, 91). To commemorate his dead wife and publicly declare his eternal love, Baldassarre wrote an intense epitaph, destined to be reproduced on Ippolita’s tomb, in a side chapel of the Chiesa di S. Maria delle Grazie, near Mantua, built according to the dispositions of the will in 1523.
In the face of the death of his wife, the words of Castiglione are a testimony of eternal fidelity to the memory of his marriage, not weakened but strengthened by the pain of the loss: “Non ego nunc vivo, coniunx dolcissima: vitam / corpore namque tuo fata meam abstulerunt; / sed vivam, tumulo cum tecum condar in isto, / iungenturque tuis ossibus ossa mea” (I live no more, sweetest bride: life has been taken form me by fate, together with your body; but I shall live again when I shall be buried with you in this tomb and by bones shall join yours) (F. Berni, B. Castiglione, G. Della Casa, Carmina, edited by M. Scorsone, Torino 1995, 56).
