BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE AND LA SPREZZATURA

Baldassarre Castiglione 

Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)

c.1515

Louvre

THE GREAT COURTIER

(Il GRANDE CORTIGIANO)

Each time I have been to the Louvre, while everyone else is jostling for a quick look at La Gioconda (aka la Mona Lisa, that painting behind velvet rope and bullet proof glass ), I go to the room perpendicular to that room, and the next room, and say hello to the FOUR other Leonardos in the Museum, and to this sublime and elegant Raffaello portrait of the Courtier Baldassarre Castiglione, and usually, there is no one around me, because they are all angling for that long view of Lisa Gherardini. 

Go figure.

It was Baldassarre Castiglione who “walked the walk” as well as “talked the talk” of the Renaissance humanist: a courtly gentleman, polyglot and polymathic, suave and urbane, author and poet.  It was Castiglione  in his famous 1528 book, Il Cortigiano (The Courtier), who first defined that virtually untranslatable Italian word for elegant and effortless nonchalant coolness, Sprezzatura.

The guy was supersmart and supercool. 

Ars longa!