 The "Book of the Courtier" was much more than that, however, having the character of a drama, an open-ended philosophical discussion, and an essay.It has been seen as a poignantly nostalgic evocation of an idealized milieu — that of the small courts of the High Renaissance which were vanishing in the Italian Wars; as a reverent tribute to the friends of Castiglione's youth, in particular the chastely married Duchess Isabella Gonzaga of Urbino, to whom Castiglione had addressed a sequence of Platonic sonnets and who died in 1526; and even as a veiled political allegory.It was composed over the course of twenty years, beginning in 1508, and ultimately published in 1528 by the Aldine Press in Venice just before the author's death.