Abstract

The essay aims to present Giovanni Della Casa’s De officiis, a Latin treatise written around 1540, and conceived as a discussion of the relationship between stronger and weaker friends within the courts of early Renaissance Rome. After offering some new information on the manuscripts of De officiis, the essay discusses the structure of the work and its relationship with classical authors (Cicero and Aristotle among others) and with contemporary society. The author thus underlines Della Casa’s intention to propose a model for managing relations in the hierarchical world of the Italian courts, as an alternative to the proposals offered a few years earlier by Castiglione in Il libro del cortegiano.