Tasked with writing a book “on courtly life and behavior,” Castiglione writes that he wished to do so while “the court of Urbino was still fresh and vivid” in his memory. Yet Castiglione was “never able to bring the work to the state that would satisfy [his] judgement” (31). When some early drafts inadvertently entered circulation, he decided to revise the drafts himself for publication.

Castiglione begins with praise for several of the “outstanding men and women who used to frequent the court of Urbino” (31). Castiglione calls the book a “portrait of the court of Urbino,” but modestly claims that he is but a “worthless painter […] who cannot adorn the truth with pretty colors or use perspective to deceive the eye” (32). He does not write in Tuscan like Boccaccio, but chooses the modern language of Lombardy, explaining: “if my language falls short of the ideal, then it will be all the easier for courtiers to approach in real life the end and goals set before them” (36). Castiglione does not agree that “it is pointless to teach what cannot be learned” (35) and will leave it to posterity to judge his book’s worth.