What does it mean to be cool? How has this changed over time, and is the modern idea of coolness just that, a modern phenomenon? Western popular culture, in particular directed towards men, has for the last 70 or 80 years has put forward the idea of the cool man. The enigmatic character, who seems to always act without difficulty or strain. This idea can be summed up in a single word: the 16th century Italian concept of sprezzatura. A word originating from Baldassare Castiglione’s 1528 work, The Book of the Courtier. Castiglione states that it is among the chief qualities that a courtier must possess. It means a studied carelessness, to possess sprezzatura is to make the difficult appear effortless. If you have sprezzatura you always have something to say, that is witty, clear, and measured; you never have l’esprit de l’escalair. You must act as if all tasks and conversation come naturally, and, crucially, ensure that those around you do not recognise the deception; they must never suspect the effort, concentration, and practice required to maintain this façade: without it you lack sprezzatura. When James Joyce first read The Courtier his brother told him he had become more polite but less sincere, Joyce contended that that was the point.[1]
Castiglione’s work was incredibly popular and influential in the royal courts of Europe and with the growing number of gentry and burghers, all jockeying for position in the very limited space at the top of society. The book champions qualities that fit with the Renaissance ideal man, l’uomo universale: the courtier who ‘was regarded by the civilisation of the age as its choicest flower.’[2] Castiglione embodied this ideal himself in many ways in his long and varied career as courtier, poet, soldier, diplomat, and writer. These qualities were certainly admired by the great and the good, and upon the death of Castiglione in 1529, the Habsburg Emperor Charles V is said to have declared ‘One of the finest gentlemen in the world is dead.’
The book itself follows a series of fictional conversations between a number of Castiglione’s contemporaries at the court of Duke Federico of Urbino, where the various speakers discuss over the course of three nights what qualities make the perfect courtier. The Courtier is an example of performative writing, that is writing to prove the writer’s cleverness – art that is made so it is seen to be done. It was not originally intended only as a guide to help readers navigate the complex world of the court (which it would later come to be used as) but to show to peers how clever and capable Castiglione was.[3] Castiglione claimed to have written the book in a single week, but it was in fact an arduous labour that went through several drafts over the course of twenty years.
The spread of The Courtier helped and was helped by an increasing influence of Italian culture on the royal courts of Europe. In France, during Henri III’s reign many of the courtiers took to speaking Italian, and listening to Italian music, much to the consternation of more patriotic Frenchmen,[4] and the Italian styles which were favoured by Henry III and his mignons fuelled anti-Italian agitation in the literary sphere, examples including Jean Bodin’s République and Henri Estienne’s Deuz dialogues du nouveau langage francois Italianizé (Two dialogues of the new Italianised French), condemning the works of Machiavelli and Castiglione respectively.[5] Imported effeminate acts, such as the use of soap, white-tooth powder, and forks also came under fire from critics such as Thomas d’Embry in his work L’Isle des hermaphordites nouvellement descouverte (The Isle of the newly discovered hermaphrodites).[6] Despite these scathing critiques of The Courtier and its Italian culture it proved to be very popular in the French court and with the wider literate society in France throughout the 16th century. Many French courtiers owned copies in Italian, and it was translated three times in French, with twenty-three editions being published in France between 1537 and 1592.[7] Its translation happened alongside those of other Italian works, such as Oristo’s Orlando Furioso, and Machievelli’s Il Principe.
The first translation of The Courtier into a foreign language was by Juan Boscán, a Catalan poet, in 1534. This Spanish version had between 12 and 16 editions, three of which were published in Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands.[8] There is an extant letter of Castiglione’s asking for a number of copies to be shipped to him in Toledo, when he served as ambassador, likely to distribute among his friends there. The main contemporary translation into English was by Sir Thomas Hoby, a diplomat and translator. Published in 1561 it was a key text of the English Renaissance. For Hoby proficiency in languages especially Italian, French, and Spanish was necessary for any English courtier; in order to flourish you had to be ‘seen in tongues’, to use his phrase. Queen Elizabeth encouraged this linguistic proficiency in her court and her tutor Robert Ascham spoke each of the three with ‘perfect readiness.’[9] Increased literacy throughout Western Europe, in particular the city-states of Italy where in almost all the cities free education was provided to the children of communal taxpayers[10], coupled with as we’ve seen the expansion of printing, allowed the book of the courtier to flourish.
But for all its popularity in the years after it was published, what value does it hold for us now? It could seem to the modern reader that Castiglione’s work only with its focus on the pleasing of a despotic ruler, on whose whims the courtier’s prosperity and even their life depended on pleasing. However, Joan Faust writing in the mid-1990s states that ‘Castiglione’s courtier is not dead, he wears a Brooks Brothers suit and a false face.’[11] Flattery and making one’s accomplishments and abilities seem greater than they are, are by no means dying skills. The presentation of oneself to one’s peers and wider society as capable, or thriving, successful is ever more important. The image you show to the world: of perfect happiness, of the result without the effort is not reality. It is but a simulacrum. Alison Brown contends that the courtier of Castiglione’s imaginings is a paragon that cannot be reached, and the creation of this untouchable ideal is in reaction to the waning power of the Italian states, as the kingdoms of France and Spain defeated and sacked Milan, Florence and Rome.[12] A reflection on a lost age that existed only in the mind. The performance of greatness belies the reality of weakness and helplessness of the Italian city-states.
Bibliography and Further Reading:
- Berger Jr, Harry. The Absence of Grace: sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books. Stanford, 2000.
- Black, Robert. ‘Education and the emergence of a literate society’ in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1300-1550, edited by John Najemy (Oxford, 2004) pp. 1-19.
- Brown, Alison. ‘Rethinking the Renaissance after the crisis’ in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, pp. 246-266.
- Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy translated by S.G.C. Middlemore. New York, 1954.
- Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano. Cambridge, 1995.
- Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier translated by George Bull. Bungay, 1967.
- Collins, James B. The state in early Modern France. Cambridge, 1995.
- Faust, Joan. ‘Shmoozing in the Renaissance: Castiglione’s “The Courtier” and Modern Business Behaviour’ Studies in Popular Culture Vol. 18, No. 2 (April, 1996), pp 69-79.
- Knecht, Robert. The French Renaissance Court. New Haven, 2008.
- Knecht, Robert. The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. London, 1996.
- Richards, Jennifer. ‘Assumed Simplicity and the Critique of Nobility: Or, How Castiglione Read Cicero’ Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 460-486.
- Stengel, Richard. You’re too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery. New York, 2000.
Interesting links:
The Book of Life: How to be a Man – an essay proposing an alternative to sprezzatura
GQ Stories: Sprezzatura Style – What sprezzatura can mean today.
- [1] Richard Stengel, You’re too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery (New York, 2000), p. 143.
- [2] Jacob Burckhardt. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy translated by S.G.C Middlemore (New York, 1954), p. 269.
- [3] Stengel, You’re too Kind, p. 133.
- [4] Robert Knecht, The French Renaissance Court (New Haven, 2008), p. 322.
- [5] Knecht, The French Renaissance Court, p. 323.
- [6] Robert Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France (London, 1996), p. 489.
- [7] Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge, 1995), pp 63-64.
- [8] Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier, p. 65.
- [9] Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier, p. 61.
- [10] Robert Black, ‘Education and the emergence of a literate society’ in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1300-1550, edited by John Najemy, p. 24.
- [11] Joan Faust, ‘Shmoozing in the Renaissance: Castiglione’s “The Courtier” and Modern Business Behaviour’ Studies in Popular Culture Vol. 18, no. 2 (April 1996), p. 70.
- [12] Alison Brown ‘Rethinking the Renaissance after the crisis’ in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, p 264.
Historical Matters 