Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

intellectual, moral, and religious existence which his wife and family should share with him,” 47
started out with an introductory quote from an Italian authoritative writer in which it was
argued that certain obscurities in a written text should be regarded as an intellectual challenge,
rather than a nuisance. 48 More interesting than the exact words and meaning of this particular
passage, is the book from which it was extracted: Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (The
Courtier, 1528). 49 Castiglione’s book of courtly manners counted as the epitome in its genre,
setting the standard for what the ideal courtier was or should be. 50
It is striking that Huygens chose to quote from this book and use its authority – a book
that describes the daily behavior, manners, values and language that ‘men and women of the
world’ should have and use – as the preface of his exemplary account of his and his wife’s life.
To my mind it expresses even more: to Huygens it was a completely natural thing to use the
authority of Baldassare Castiglione, who coined the term sprezzatura and codified the elements
of gentile behavior and polite discourse.
During the formative years of his “Grand Tour” Constantijn Huygens had lived and
worked together intensively with ambassadors like van Aerssen (who effectively was, as
47 BACHRACH, A. G. H. (1980) The role of the Huygens family in seventeenth-century Dutch culture.
IN BOS, H. J. M., RUDWICK, M. J. S., SNELDERS, H. A. M. & VISSER, R. P. W. (Eds.) Studies
on Christiaan Huygens : invited papers from the Symposium on the Life and Work of Christiaan Huygens,
Amsterdam, 22-25 August 1979. Lisse, Swets & Zeitlinger., p37-40
48 CASTIGLIONE, B. & JAVITCH, D. (2002b) The book of the courtier: the Singleton translation: an
authoritative text, criticism, New York, W.W. Norton., p36, cap. 30. Cited in ZWAAN, F. L. (1973) Daghwerck
van Constantijn Huygens, Assen, Van Gorcum., p73.
49 CASTIGLIONE, B. & JAVITCH, D. (2002a) The book of the courtier : the Singleton translation : an
authoritative text, criticism, New York, W.W. Norton.
50 BURKE, P. (1996) The fortunes of the Courtier : the European reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano, University
Park, Pennsylvania State University Press., BURKE, P. (1991) The language of gesture in early
modern Italy. IN BREMMER, J. N. & ROODENBURG, H. (Eds.) A Cultural history of gesture : from
antiquity to the present day. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press., ROODENBURG, H. (1991) The 'hand of
friendship': shaking hands and other gestures in the Dutch Republic. IN BREMMER, J. N. &
ROODENBURG, H. (Eds.) A Cultural history of gesture : from antiquity to the present day. Cambridge, UK,
Polity Press., ROODENBURG, H. (1997) How to Sit, Stand, and Walk. Toward a Historical
Anthropology of Dutch Paintings and Prints. IN FRANITS, W. E. (Ed.) Looking at seventeenth-century
Dutch art : realism reconsidered. Cambridge [England] ; New York, Cambridge University Press.,
BIAGIOLI, M. (1993) Galileo, courtier : the practice of science in the culture of absolutism, Chicago, University
of Chicago Press., ASCH, R. G. (1991) Introduction. Court and Household from the Fifteenth to the
Seventeenth Centuries. IN ASCH, R. G. & BIRKE, A. M. (Eds.) Princes, patronage, and the nobility : the
court at the beginning of the Modern Age, c.1450-1650. London, Oxford [England] ; New York, German
Historical Institute London, Oxford University Press., p6: “The late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
have a particular significance for the development of court culture in Europe as a whole. It was during
this period that the specific courtly ideal of life as expressed, for instance, in Castiglione’s Cortegiano
emerged. During the centuries that followed this new ideal replaced the traditional knightly-military
way of life at least among those sections of the nobility that had any contact with the court.”
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