Giovanni Della Casa, who had grown up…

Giovanni Della Casa, who had grown up in Mugello, studied in Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Rome, had been named archbishop of Benevento in 1544 but was sent as papal nuncio to Venice; Pope Paul IV had made him secretary of state in 1555.

Besides some youthful satiric verse in the manner of Francesco Berni, Della Casa has produced lyric poems in a majestic style and some political works, such as Orazioni politiche (1707; “Political Discourses”), in which he had expressed his sorrow for the calamities of Italy.

The work that brings Della Casa immediate renown, however, is his sane and witty treatise Galateo.

Written between 1550 and 1555, it will be first published with his Rime in 1558, but posthumously: Della Casa dies at 53 at Montepulciano on November 14, 1556.

Galateo differs from an earlier etiquette manual, Baldassare Castiglione's Il cortegiano (“The Courtier”), in being more concerned with the details of correct behavior in polite society than with courtly etiquette.

Like Il cortegiano, Della Casa's manual becomes widely read throughout Europe.