CANOSSA, LUDOVICO di. — Of the Veronese branch of the counts of C. (who are not descended from the family of Countess Matilde), he was born in Verona in 1476 and died there in 1532. Through his family connections he was educated and instructed at the courts of the Gonzaga of Mantua and the Montefeltro of Urbino, where he learned the art of courtly life so well that Baldassarre Castiglione chose him to provide the model for the courtier (Il Cortegiano, I, chap. 3).
Cultivated (he knew a great deal of Greek and collected books and codices in that language), and a friend of scholars and artists, he was considered one of the most skilful and capable diplomats of his age and was soon successfully employed in embassies by Guidobaldo d'Urbino and Julius II, who on 10 February 1511 appointed him bishop of Tricarico. Leone X chose him as his majordomo and sent him as nuncio to France in May 1513, where he succeeded in reconciling Luigi XII with Enrico VIII of England. He was one of the most ardent partisans of French policy and in September 1515 negotiated the league between Leone X and France, which was ratified in October. On 24 October 1516 he received the bishopric of Bayeux, and from 1523 to 1529 he was France’s ambassador to Venice; in opposition to Spanish predominance, he cooperated with Gian Matteo Giberti, datary of Clemente VII, in forming the League of Cognac, which brought so many evils upon Italy and the famous sack upon Rome (1527). In 1529 he withdrew to one of his villas at
Grezzana, not far from Verona, in the otium elegans that was an aspiration of the humanists of the Renaissance. In April 1531 he also resigned his bishoprics.