Renaissance Woman_The Life of Vittoria Colonna

by Ramie Targoff

  6

  LIFE AT COURT

  WHEN VITTORIA LEFT ISCHIA for her ill-fated trip to Milan at the end of 1525, the d’Avalos castle had few inhabitants, and even fewer guests. Two years later, in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome, the castle was transformed from a sleepy fortress to a bustling world of its own. For the first time since the Aragonese kings of Naples had used the castle as a playground at the end of the fifteenth century—they would travel across the Bay of Naples with visiting dignitaries and statesmen, friends and relatives, to enjoy the pleasures of the island—life on Ischia rivaled that of the liveliest Renaissance courts.

  There is no comparable environment in our modern world to a Renaissance court. An elegant country house filled with talented guests is probably the closest equivalent, but the comparison works only superficially. Even if Renaissance courts looked from the outside like fancy homes filled with impressive people, they were also the equivalent of small kingdoms. Each court had its own ruler—a duke or marquis, or sometimes a duchess or marchioness—who was officially the vassal of a larger entity, such as the Holy Roman Empire or the Papal States, but in practice exercised nearly complete control over his or her dominion. The servants at court included ambassadors, political advisers, military officers, lawyers, masters of revenue, soldiers, secretaries, architects, musicians, artists, and entertainers, as well as the domestic staff typical of any great household: stewards, chamberlains, grooms, paymasters, dispensers, muleteers, coachmen, falconers, butlers, cantineers, carvers, cooks, under-cooks, bakers, keepers of the poultry, stable assistants, charwomen, and personal maids and valets for each member of the family.

  Vittoria did not grow up in such a world: her childhood was largely spent, as we have seen, in the feudal castle of Marino and the busy metropolises of Rome and Naples. She would have known all about court life, however, from her mother, Agnese, who was the daughter of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. The illegitimate son of Guidantonio da Montefeltro, whose long marriage to Rengarda Malatesta had produced no heir, Federico was officially recognized by the church as legitimate in 1424, following Guidantonio’s remarriage to Caterina Colonna, whose uncle was Pope Martin V. After the very brief reign of his half brother, Oddantonio, who was assassinated under suspicious circumstances, Federico became Urbino’s ruler and transformed this small hill city in the Marches into one of the most cultivated courts in all of Europe. He did this through his terrific success as a condottiere, using the vast wealth he acquired by waging war to support art, architecture, literature, music, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine at a level unparalleled in all of Italy.

  Agnese’s mother was Battista Sforza, daughter of Alessandro, Lord of Pesaro, the illegitimate son of the great Sforza condottiere Muzio Attendolo. (Alessandro’s brother Francesco was the first Sforza duke of Milan.) Battista was thirteen years old at the time of her marriage to the thirty-eight-year-old Federico, whom she had previously considered her uncle—Federico’s sister Sveva da Montefeltro had married Battista’s father, Alessandro, after the death of Battista’s mother, Costanza da Varano. Despite the age difference and the complexity in family relations, the marriage was known to be a happy one and yielded many children: Battista bore Federico at least six daughters before dying after giving birth to a son, Guidobaldo, when she was twenty-five years old.

  For lovers of Renaissance art, the marriage of Federico and Battista has been preserved through the magnificent double portrait painted by Piero della Francesca (see color plate 12). Piero was the most significant artist of the period to enjoy Federico’s patronage, and his paintings for the duke rank among his finest work. The portraits, which can be seen today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, are both in profile, a decision shaped in part by Federico’s having lost one of his eyes in a jousting tournament, but which lends to the paintings a formal quality typical of ancient medals. Indeed, the portrait of Federico, who is perhaps best remembered for his crooked nose, conjures up the solemnity of a Roman statesman: his expression is simultaneously benevolent and impassive; his gaze does not meet our eyes. Battista’s portrait is perhaps most striking for the eerie whiteness of her skin, which has led some art historians to think it was painted after her death in 1472 (the Uffizi dates the panels to sometime between 1465 and 1470). She wears an extravagant headdress, and her forehead is extremely high, which was considered a sign of great beauty. In the background, there is a landscape of infinite gentleness and serenity, which adds to the sense of the exquisite world Federico created for himself and those around him.

  There is no record of Vittoria visiting Urbino as a child, when her uncle Guidobaldo and his wife, Elisabetta, the daughter of Federico I Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, had replaced her grandparents as duke and duchess. She also had no cousins from that union. As nearly everyone in Italy seems to have known, Guidobaldo was impotent, and his marriage to Elisabetta had never been consummated. Elisabetta was said to have appeared before the court visibly filled with shame the morning after the consummation of the marriage had been “scheduled”—the date was carefully selected by astrologers—and over the coming years, Guidobaldo was rumored to have tried every possible remedy, including magic, but all in vain. Notwithstanding his physical limitations, Elisabetta remained by his side and was regarded by all as a model of wifely virtue and patience.

  Vittoria may not have been to Urbino as a child, but she was able to read all about the glories of its court in Castiglione’s The Courtier. Born in 1478 into a noble family from outside of Mantua—his father, Cristoforo, was one of the leading soldiers in the service of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and his mother, Luigia, was herself a member of the Nobili branch of the Gonzaga family—Castiglione received a very fine humanist education at Milan before becoming, in effect, a professional courtier. He served first at the courts of Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Francesco II and Isabella d’Este in Mantua before coming to Urbino in 1504, where he served Guidobaldo and Elisabetta until Guidobaldo’s nephew and heir, Francesco della Rovere, sent him to Rome as his diplomat in 1513.

  Portrait of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, Vittoria’s uncle, by Raphael (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence)

  Portrait of Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, Vittoria’s aunt, attributed to Raphael (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence)

  When Castiglione arrived in Urbino, Guidobaldo had only recently resumed power after the city had been seized—twice—by Cesare Borgia. It was only after Cesare’s father Alexander VI’s death in 1503 and the subsequent release of fervent anti-Borgia sentiment in Rome that Guidobaldo’s duchy was reinstalled, although his hold on the city remained far from secure. Castiglione’s initial appointment at Urbino was as a soldier: he was put in charge of a squad of fifty of Guidobaldo’s men to defend the ducal palace. His talents as a statesman quickly emerged, however, and in 1506 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to London, where he received, on Guidobaldo’s behalf, the Order of the Garter. While in London, he met with Henry VII, who showered him with gifts, including a thoroughbred horse and several pedigree dogs.

  In addition to his military and diplomatic skills, Castiglione was a brilliant observer of the world around him, and a very gifted writer. After leaving Urbino in 1513, he began work on The Courtier. On the surface of things, The Courtier recounted a series of conversations that supposedly took place at the ducal palace in 1506 (the conversations were almost certainly altered or enhanced). But the experience of The Courtier, as its enormous success suggests, was something far greater. Castiglione gave his readers, many of whom were members of the middle or gentry class, an intimate glimpse into the rarefied world of the Italian elite. Aspiring gentlemen in Madrid or Hamburg or Paris could learn about elegant people they never knew, and watch them talk to one another. They could enjoy, in effect, the pleasure of being voyeurs.

  Gathered at the ducal palace in Castiglione’s book were some of the most celebrated figures of the era. Among them were Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici, the son of Loren
zo the Magnificent, who settled in Urbino in 1502 after staying in various other Italian and French courts following the Medici exile from Florence in 1494 (he returned to Florence as ruler of the city in 1512); Count Lodovico Canossa, a nobleman from Verona who became bishop of Tricarico in 1511; Bembo, perhaps the most famous man of letters in all of Italy; Ottaviano Fregoso, who became doge of Genoa in 1513, and his brother Federico, who was made archbishop of Salerno in 1507; and Francesco Maria della Rovere, Guidobaldo’s nephew and heir. In all, there were roughly fifteen men mentioned by name, and four women, the most famous of whom was the duchess herself. A great patroness of music and the arts, Elisabetta was celebrated throughout Italy for her exquisite taste and sound judgment, and when Guidobaldo was away from the palace, she ruled the court with great skill.

  The conversations that Castiglione recounts took place in the Hall of the Vigils, which lay on the far side of the magnificent Throne Room, and represented the transition between the public and private spaces of the palace’s piano nobile (literally the “noble level,” or main floor). As the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described it some four hundred years later in his poem “The People,” it was in the Hall of the Vigils that

  … the duchess and her people talked

  The stately midnight through until they stood

  In their great window looking at the dawn.

  The “great window” Yeats describes opens onto Urbino’s principal piazza and its beautiful cathedral, which was erected in the eleventh century, but was rebuilt by Federico as part of his ambitious renovations to the city. On the other side of the spacious but also somewhat intimate hall where the guests would gather was the duchess’s private apartment—her bedchamber, dressing room, and prayer room—which was elaborately decorated with magnificent stucco ribbons, garlands, wreaths, cupids, spirals, and medallions gracing the ceilings; the large wooden doors were carved with symbols of the Montefeltro family and exquisite architectural perspectives. Today the duchess’s rooms are open to the public, along with the rest of the palace. But in the sixteenth century, Castiglione’s book was the only way in.

  The reason for The Courtier’s success, however, was not simply the vicarious pleasure of observing famous aristocrats talking to one another in their private chambers. It was the particular topic of their conversation. Every evening after supper, the guests chose a different game or entertainment to occupy them. On the occasion Castiglione described, the evening’s activity was to discuss the qualities of the ideal courtier. The group found the conversation so engaging that it was resumed on three consecutive evenings, over the course of which they discussed all of the qualities that young men—and, less centrally, young women—needed to possess in order to become perfect courtiers.

  It is not surprising that for educated and ambitious Europeans interested in climbing the social ladder, The Courtier became an immensely powerful tool. As Roger Ascham, the tutor to the English princess Elizabeth, described it in his own book The Schoolmaster: “Advisedly read, and diligently followed, [The Courtier] would do a young gentleman more good than three years travel abroad in Italy.” A mixed compliment, to be sure—Englishmen were on the whole fearful of being corrupted by worldly Italians, so the opportunity to stay at home and learn from a book was compelling indeed. But Ascham’s observation gets at the allure of Castiglione’s book. It handed over a secret code for becoming something you were not.

  What did an attentive reader of Castiglione’s book learn? The list is nearly endless, but here is a small sampling. The ideal courtier should play the lute or the viola da mano (the Spanish vihuela, similar to a modern guitar). He should dance without “those quick movements of foot and those double steps” that hardly befit a gentleman. He should play tennis, and also know how to swim, jump, run, and throw stones. He should dress neither as the French, who are sometimes “over-ample,” nor as the Germans, who are often “over-scanty,” but instead adopt the style of the Italians. He should also wear mostly black. He can play at cards and dice, so long as he is not distracted from more important obligations, but should not spend too much time on chess, which requires too much study and hence deserves the ironic praise of Alexander the Great for “the fellow who at a good distance could impale chickpeas on a needle.” He should not be the bearer of bad news, nor be “obstinate and contentious, as are some who seem to delight only in being troublesome and obnoxious like flies.” He should not have any “peasant ways that bespeak the hoe and the plow a thousand miles away.” He should under no circumstances practice tumbling.

  The single most important quality that the courtier needed to have was the most difficult to acquire. The perfect courtier, Castiglione wrote, should “practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.” At its core, the idea of sprezzatura, for which there is no adequate English translation—the closest is “nonchalance,” which is actually French—licensed deception. Nobility and grace were not qualities you needed to be born with: they were roles, Castiglione implied, that you could put on. Doing this, of course, was no easy task, but the sheer possibility of becoming a gentleman not by blood but through skill ran counter to everything the world of the Colonna and the Montefeltro stood for. Almost certainly without intending it, Castiglione had launched a revolution.

  It is not obvious what a supreme aristocrat like Vittoria gained from reading The Courtier. Even if she was not raised at court, she had been surrounded by courtiers her entire life, and the ideal world that Castiglione described was that of her family. The pleasures for her of Castiglione’s book must have come in part from seeing that world so beautifully represented. It is a deeply human delight—even if it is often mixed, of course, with some level of discomfort—to have one’s own life captured as a form of art. Vittoria may also have felt a kind of nostalgia, as Castiglione himself clearly did, for the milieu of her parents and grandparents, which seemed, however fictitiously, to have been more refined and civilized than her immediate surroundings.

  What Vittoria described taking pleasure in when she read Castiglione’s book, however, was of a more writerly sort. Put simply, she loved the elegance of his prose. “Beyond its most beautiful and novel subject,” she wrote to him in September 1524, “the excellence of its style is such that with a delicateness never felt before it leads you to a lovely and fertile hill, rising so slowly and carefully that you never even realize you are no longer on the level where you began; and it is a path so well cultivated and ornate, that only with difficulty can you discern who had worked harder to make it so beautiful: nature or art.”

  This is a gorgeous piece of literary criticism, and it shows a very subtle appreciation for what Castiglione had achieved. Indeed, the comparison of reading The Courtier to climbing a hill without realizing the effort involved, or struggling to discern whether the path itself is natural or man-made, transformed the book into its own example of sprezzatura. At moments like this, Vittoria shows us why writers and artists of the very highest quality—Castiglione, Bembo, and Michelangelo—would seek her opinion of their work in the decades to come. She was a true intellectual peer.

  Vittoria wrote these words to Castiglione in response to a request she had received from him to return her copy of his manuscript. In her letter, she politely refused:

  I haven’t forgotten to keep my promise to you; on the contrary, it grieves me that my memory [of it] is so fresh that it has continually impeded the delight I take in reading your book, reminding me that I have to return it to you without rereading it as many times as I’d like. And now that you have done me such a disservice of soliciting it from me, and because I am already halfway through my second reading of it, I beg Your Excellency to allow me to finish it.

  The combination of compliment (she is reading the book for the second time through) and complaint (he is ruining her reading experience by making his demand for the manuscript) suggests a level of familiarit
y between the two friends that is otherwise not much in evidence in the surviving letters. It also shows Vittoria at her most playful, or even cheeky: we rarely witness her assuming such a tone of mock grief.

  Not only did Vittoria hold on to Castiglione’s manuscript, but she also seems to have shared it with some friends, who shared it with other friends—this was the way that manuscripts circulated in the period, often with new copies made along the way. In September 1527, when Castiglione was serving as papal ambassador to Spain, he got word that everyone in Naples was reading his unpublished book. Vittoria had promised him not to show the manuscript to anyone, but apparently she had not kept her word. In fact, she was by no means the only person with a copy: Castiglione had shared the book with many others, but he singled Vittoria out for blame. Having learned of what he regarded as the promiscuous circulation of his manuscript, he claimed that he felt compelled to take matters into his own hands, and decided to allow The Courtier to be printed. This was more than a decade after he had finished his first draft—he revised the book rather obsessively over the course of many years. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that the manuscript Vittoria had was not up-to-date, which may explain why he was so nervous about its falling into the wrong hands, and ending up in print in the earlier version.