The Book of the CourtierCastiglione, Baldassarre, conte
History
The Book of the Courtier
Castiglione, Baldassarre, conte
Courtesy -- Early works to 1800; Courts and courtiers -- Early works to 1800
Much enlarged from a photographic print of a medal in the King’s
Library, British Museum. This is probably the medal for which
Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572), in his autobiography, describes
making a sketch from life in 1537. See Émile Molinier’s monograph on
Cellini in the series, _Les Artistes Célèbres_, published at Paris
by the _Librairie de l'Art_, p. 33; and Armand’s _Les Médailleurs
Italiens_, i, 150.
52.—“But speaking of the beauty we have in mind, which is only that
which is seen in the bodies and especially in the faces of men, and
which excites this ardent desire that we call love,—we will say that it
is an effluence of divine goodness, and that although it is diffused
like the sun’s light upon all created things, yet when it finds a face
well proportioned and framed with a certain pleasant harmony of various
colours embellished by lights and shadows and by an orderly distance and
limit of outlines, it infuses itself therein and appears most beautiful,
and adorns and illumines that object whereon it shines with grace and
wonderful splendour, like a sunbeam falling upon a beautiful vase of
polished gold set with precious gems. Thus it agreeably attracts the
eyes of men, and entering thereby, it impresses itself upon the soul,
and stirs and delights her with a new sweetness throughout, and by
kindling her it excites in her a desire for its own self.
“Then, being seized with desire to enjoy this beauty as something good,
if the soul allows herself to be guided by the judgment of sense, she
runs into very grievous errours, and judges that the body wherein the
beauty is seen is the chief cause thereof; and hence, in order to enjoy
that beauty, she deems it necessary to join herself as closely to that
body as she can; which is false: and accordingly, whoever thinks to
enjoy the beauty by possessing the body deceives himself, and is moved,
not by true perception through reasonable choice, but by false opinion
through sensual appetite: wherefore the pleasure also that results
therefrom is necessarily false and vicious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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