Abstract

This chapter analyses the legacies of both brothers and the emphasis that writers, biographers, secretaries, and artists placed on preserving a particular type of elite martial masculinity. Throughout the sixteenth century, war, confessional conflict, and the threat of further invasion from the Ottoman Empire created a crisis of masculinity in Italy that led to biographers of Ferrante Gonzaga publicising the captain's life as a pedagogical tool for young men. Federico Gonzaga, although less militarised, was nonetheless remembered using different classical and contemporary traditions. The combined effect of their legacies reveals the desire of contemporaries to shape the next generation of Italian rulers and captains by celebrating Hispanophile predecessors.

Keywords: Gender, Gonzaga, Italian Wars, Biography, Funeral Orations

He who always lived among the Spaniards

Protector, defender, honourable and guardian

And to his enemies, enemy

Defending his Kingdoms and his glory

It was fitting that, in dying,

He should be remembered in life (as a friend)

By such a nation, a witness

To all that he did in the world.

Magnanimous Lord CESARE GONZAGA

Alonso de Ulloa took this task

For your invincible father, Don Fernando

So that Spain may repay its debt

And the brilliance of he who shone

May endure perpetually in our era.