Libraries
Libraries
Book called Called the Courtier, by Baldassare Castiglione
Il libro del Cortegiano del conde Baldassare Castiglione (Hispanicized as Baltasar Castiglione or Castellón) was published in the Aldina press in Venice in 1528. In the best style of the Italian humanism, El Cortesano is an essay on politics and manners, characteristic of the Courtesan literature, that is developed in a fictional dialogue. The four days of this colloquium correspond with the four books of the volume in which participated distinguished friend of the Court of Urbino: the Dukes of the Urbino House, Giuliano de Medici, Gaspare Palavicino y Pietro Bembo, among others.
Castiglione describes, as if he was painting, the ideal of the courtier for the Italy of the sixteenth century, at the moment of the splendor of the humanist renaissance. The idealization of this paradigmatic character, which pretends to have transcendental knowledge and to proceed with justice, can be translated into the archetype of the Christian prince, model in force in Italy and Spain.
A hypothesize deducted from the Spanish translation of Juan Boscán, printed in 1534 in Barcelona by Pedro Monpegat, makes us think that it belonged to the library of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. In folio 524v, of his Inventario de bienes (Inventory of goods), it is declared the existence of two bodies or volumes of El Cortesano. In a study of Aurelio Miró-Quesada written in the decade of 1990, he points out the similarities between the reasons of the Inca Garcilaso and of Juan Boscán to translate: Diálogos de amor, the first; and El Cortesano, the second. Both of them shared their attachment and respect for the original language, as well as a careful eagerness needed for a cultivated audience.