The Many Fortunes of the Courtier: The Resilience of Castiglione’s Cortegiano
Learning of Castiglione’s death in 1529, Charles V declared “one of the finest gentlemen in the world has just died.”
The Spanish emperor’s praise is evidence of the depth and scope of the influence of Il Cortegiano during the
sixteenth century, appearing in Spanish translation by Juan Boscán in 1534 and in an Elizabethan translation by
Thomas Hoby in 1561. Yet Castiglione’s Courtier—read at times as a book of manners, and other times as
representative of Renaissance ideals—continued to influence writers, poets, and literary critics well into the
seventeenth century and for long after. Whether interested in sprezzatura, the art of conversation, the persistence of