The Book of the Courtier (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Baldesar Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier is the High Renaissance in microcosm. It is the portrait of a group of leading thinkers and wits gathered together in the Palace of Urbino in March 1507, playing a game where their task is to delineate the perfect courtier. In their conversations about courtliness they range from chivalry to humanist debates about language, literature, painting and sculpture, to the art of conversation and the telling of jokes, the role and dignity of women, the delicate job of guiding wilful princes, and finally to love and its transcendent form in pure spirit.