Castiglione's Book of the Courtier Published

1528

Baldassare Castiglione's dialogue on the perfect courtier, set at the court of Urbino twenty years earlier, appeared in print in Venice. It prescribed a graceful nonchalance called sprezzatura and was devoured by ambitious gentlemen from Lisbon to Cracow. The idea of the Renaissance gentleman was in their hands. The concept of sprezzatura became one of European culture's most influential ideas, shaping aristocratic behavior from England to Russia.