When Peter Burke embarked on his history of reading some of his colleagues were quizzical. Positivists questioned whether there would be any hard evidence. Now a famed British historian, Burke doesn't have to do much to convince Festivaletteratura's public. Readers leave behind a treasure trove for the interested historian, “they scribble at the margin, get angry, cross things out”. Librarians would call it defacing, but what do they know!

It is fitting that S. Maria della Vittoria church hosts the historian, in conversation with Emilio Russo. The church was commissioned by Francesco Gonzaga as the 1400s drew to a close and the Renaissance approached its peak. What remains of the frescos still dazzles. Similar traces are what Burke fell in love with when examining another landmark of the Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (Il Cortegiano), first published in 1528. Where the artist, best if male and polyhedric, is all-too-often centred by the official re-telling of the Renaissance, Burke’s The Fortunes of the Courtier (1995) is concerned with the twists and turns of a book as it crosses lands and changes hands – often, women’s.

Traces, then. Or marginalia – one can only hope that Latin will appease your fellow academics. According to Burke, Castiglione intended The Courtier as an “open book making the case for and against the supposed virtues of the perfect courtier”. The side notes made by scores of readers and publishers soon made it into a “recipe book”, a guide to social mobility for nobles wanting more. More hunting for example: while The Courtier debates the merits of possessing such a skill, the marginalia cut it short: “The nobleman must know how to hunt”. It's like watching House of Cards and take home all the wrong lessons from it.

Translations can be funhouse mirrors too, a lesson Burke articulates when letting The Courtier slip past the male reader’s gaze. Many of those responsible for The Courtier’s diffusion, 300-plus notable readers in Burke’s analysis, were women, for whom the book had a special appeal. A feminist reading could concede that women like Elisabetta Gonzaga and her lady-in-waiting Emilia Pia “run the show, control the conversation”. A character like Gaspare Pallavicino is mocked for his gross misogyny. While Castiglione “took women more seriously than his contemporaries”, an admittedly low bar, translations like the Polish one erased women from the book. Pallavicino remained, disparaging women in absentia. So long for Baldassare’s insistence on grace.

Alas, “there’s always some distortion in transmission”. Burke’s own talent for reading this double movement stills charms.