History of Italy
Contemporary historians and intellectuals remembered Ottaviano as a liberal and magnanimous prince, holding him up as a quintessential Renaissance gentleman and a pattern for rulers, as did Baldassare Castiglione who made him one of the interlocutors in "The Book of the Courtier" (1528). Francesco Guicciardini, in his "History of Italy" (1561) records him as "certainly a prince of most excellent virtue, notable for his justice and other noble qualities, and as beloved in Genoa as any ruler could be in that city of factions, where the memory of their ancient liberties was not entirely extinguished in the minds of the citizenry."