Baldassarre Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) was an Italian courtier, soldier and diplomat, born near Mantua and educated in the humanist culture of Milan. He served the Gonzaga of Mantua and then, from 1504, the dukes of Urbino, whose court he immortalized in The Book of the Courtier, begun in 1508 and published in 1528. Raphael painted his portrait, now in the Louvre. In his last years he was papal nuncio to the court of Charles V in Spain, where he was blamed for failing to foresee the imperial army's sack of Rome in 1527. He died in Toledo. His single book defined the ideal of the gentleman for Renaissance Europe.