The name of our Institution is that of a great man of the Italian Renaissance: Baldassarre Castiglione.

Baldassarre Castiglione was born in Mantova (Mantua) in 1478. The son of Cristoforo Castiglione and Luigia Gonzaga, he was a man-at-arms and also a man of letters who served at the courts of Mantova and Urbino. His masterpiece "The Courtier", a classic of Western-European literature, was in fact inspired by life at the court of Urbino and reflects the model of ideal Renaissance courtly life and of its political organization from which the concept of the modern state has evolved.

Count Baldassarre Castiglione actively participated in the political, artistic and wide ranging cultural life of the Renaissance. He was a personal friend to Michelangelo, Bembo and especially to Raphael, who painted his portrait, which today hangs in the Louvre. He was also Pope Clement VII's papal nuncio at the Court of Charles V in Toledo, Spain, where he died in 1529. The funeral eulogy was read by the Emperor himself who referred to Castiglione as the world's best knight. Castiglione's cultural attainments, which reflect those of the Courts of the Montefeltros and the Gonzagas, are a focal point of and a guiding light for a world conceived according to the vision of man as the measure of all things.

Carla Castiglioni Sessi, President