The Courtier and the Scholemaster

Abstract

critical faculty, serving no military function but employed purely for pleasure, is partial goal of the courtier's training. Once suggested, critical judgment has natural extension: a knowledge of how to draw and an acquaintance with the art of painting itself (77). If drawing were to produce no other utility or pleasure, helps in judging the excellence of statues both ancient and modern, vases, buildings, medallions, cameos, intaglios, and the like, and it also brings one to know the beauty of living bodies (82). Aesthetic appreciation from an apprenticeship to expertise is part of truly liberal education, development of the powers of the mind for their own sake. The courtiers underline the liberal values of the critical faculty when they emphasize the solace of musical appreciation for older men who are past their military prime and the centrality of discernment for women, who never play military role and need no martial training (106, 207-211). The result of such faculty is an abstract, mature enjoyment; [subtle words] cause the reader to proceed with more restraint and concentration, to reflect more, and to enjoy the talent and doctrine of the writer; and, by judiciously exerting himself little, he tastes that pleasure which is had when we achieve great things (49). Here is Renaissance contribution to the education of gentleman. The guests of Duchess Elisabetta are, quite rightly, considered neither humanist pedagogues nor literary scholars. But, as the principle of discreet judgment involves aesthetic education, so it extends to the theory of literature. The debate between Ludovico, Federico, and the others about levels of vocabulary is really digression from the outline of an ideal courtier, but it is introduced by an admonition to avoid affected use of foreign or obsolete words. The authority of antiquity, the value of imitation, and the gravity and mastery of hieratic diction are set against appeal to contemporary audience, development in