This section of the text is where Castiglione sets out the essential quality of ‘sprezzatura’ that his courtier must perfect, using the Italian word for the first time. Hoby, perhaps surprisingly, translates the word here as ‘recklessness’. While Castiglione’s original term seems to describe a very carefully controlled and artful performance of nonchalance, Hoby’s translation adds a dash of daring, devil-may-care éclat: perhaps Hoby arrived at his translation via the Italian verb ‘sprezzare’ or ‘spregiare’, meaning to disdain or despise.

This rendering of sprezzatura as something altogether more concrete and less interiorised is reflected in other parts of the book, where Hoby uses more colourful and perhaps less elegant language than Castiglione. For example, he translates Castiglione’s ‘sciocchi’ (‘stupid’) as ‘untowardely assheads’, and ‘ciechi’ (‘blind’) as ‘blind buzzards’. The result is certainly more vivid, although perhaps, at least according to Castiglione’s definition, less ‘courtly’.

Thomas Hoby (trans.), The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio (London: William Seres, 1561), sig. E2^r. Cambridge University Library, LE.6.88.