By 1530, the French Crown had been engaged in warfare in Italy almost continuously for the past thirty-five years (and would continue fighting for twenty more). While I don't know if there existed a Republican current of political thought in France prior to the enlightenment (I suspect not, but I could be wrong) there did exist a large degree of admiration for Italian achievements in the arts and sciences, but this was coupled with very little consideration (if not aversion) for Italian political affairs.

So I have come three (3! I'm not the most diligent writer, and this answer had a lot of start-and-stop) days late to point out that while we cannot know for sure what an individual fitting your description might think of the governments in Italy, nor can we know if this view influenced their opinions on the French monarchy, we would certainly expect their attitudes to be tempered by the three decades of war. Indeed, the war was pretty much the only means through which aristocrats would visit Italy at this point in time: only in the second half of the 16th century would “gentlemanly” travelers begin to visit Italy and start developing itineraries which would become the “Grand Tour” circuit undertaken by Northern European aristocrats in the 17th and 18th centuries (as an example, Michel de Montaigne who was the ur-example of the “Aristocratic Philosopher” traveling through Italy was born in 1533, and would only visit Italy in 1580).

What would an aristocrat or military officer think of the political systems they encountered in Italy? Not much, and it is clear why. The defining characteristics of the Italian political system at this point in time was undoubtably weakness and instability. Indeed, the grand republics were by now an anomaly in the Italian political landscape. While the urban consensus-gathering council systems continued to exist in all major cities well into the Italian Wars, over the previous century these had been largely subordinated to autocratic territorial dynasties, of which the most successful — the Visconti (later Sforza) of Milan — constructed fully a functional monarchial political apparatus recognized in much of Europe, which itself would exert influence and indeed dominance over one of the Maritime Republics: Genoa (this is one of the reasons why I will pass over Genoa in the paragraphs below, somewhat unjustly, but I hope understandably).

The autocracy in Milan, along with the older monarchy in Naples, were the main conduit through which the French crown first learnt of and later interfered in Italian affairs. The relationship had predated the Italian Wars: the Duke of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti and the King of France Charles VI of Valois had exchanged brides (Isabel of Valois and Valentina Visconti) at the end of the 14th century, and after Filippo Maria Visconti's troubled reign saw the end of the Visconti dynasty, the ascendency of the cadet Sforza branch saw something resembling a permanent embassy established in Paris (headed by the Duke Francesco's own sons, Galeazzo and Ludovico). Dynastic links also existed between the crowns of Naples and France, dating to the early 14th century when a branch of the french house of Anjou ascended to the throne of Naples (with ties further strengthened early the following century, with neapolitan princess Maria of Anjou — who like many of her kin had spent the majority of her life in France — marrying King Charles VIII). Thus it was the Monarchies of Italy, and not its Republics, which would develop the strongest social and familial ties with the aristocracy of France.

Indeed, by the late 15th century there seems to have existed a Franco-phile current among the Italian ruling class, especially at the court of Duke Galeazzo Sforza who fairly explicitly modeled his court on the French monarchy (with the effect of panicking Louis XI, who in all probability ordered his assassination). Other Franco-phile political communities included the Duchy of Savoy, which was explicitly in the French sphere of influence even though it was never explicitly targeted for integration with the crown the way say, Brittany or Burgundy were.

Following the outbreak of the Italian Wars, by the 1530s the most extensive interactions between the French aristocrats in Italy and the local political apparatus would have been in those places through which the French army marched through: places like Florence and Rome where negotiations were held on orderly passage (and agreements of non-obstruction by the Italians) but significantly more extensively in the above-mentioned Milan and Naples, where dynastic links had defined major military-dynastic targets: the French crown seized Milan in 1499 (ceding it to Spain in 1529) and seized Naples in 1501 (ceding it to Spain shortly thereafter, in 1505). While French control over Naples only really existed in the phase of the Italian wars when the King of France was physically present in the city with his army, in Milan the lengthier occupation saw the establishment of a formal Senate governing in name of the French King. While this might mark a breakthrough in this admittedly lengthy introduction, it isn’t really: the Milanese Senate was conceived along the lines of the French Estates-General (which French monarchs had last convened immediately prior to the Italian Wars, although they wouldn’t convene again until they were over) rather than in explicit admiration of the Venetian Senate, or any other Italian Republic’s senate. Indeed the pre-existing social links with "autocratic" Italy meant that the French crown would to rely extensively on Italian (notably Milanese, or otherwise Northwestern) aristocrats to filter and manage to the French attitude to Italian affairs, at least in the early phases of the Italian Wars, also helped along by the fact that the French could rationalize their social role within a hierarchy they understood (more on that in Part II below).

On the other hand, relations with the maritime republics (notably Venice) had different characteristics compared to Milan and Naples. While there existed a Venetian community in Paris and in a few other french cities, these were largely mercantile communities. “Embassies” at the start of the 16th century were still synonymous with state-sanctioned mercantile expeditions (almost exclusively sent eastwards) and permanent representatives would only come much later. Prior to the mid 16th-century, even when there was a permanent ambassador or consul, representatives of the Venetian state were usually individuals already embedded in the local mercantile community, with critical diplomatic negotiations largely handled by ad-hoc expeditions. The French themselves would only establish a permanent embassy to Venice in 1529, and the permanent French community in Venice would remain habitually very small at all phases of the Republic's history. Thus, Venice’s relationship with France was almost exclusively a political one, rather than a social, familial, or even mercantile one. Indeed, it would be defined more than anything by the War of the League of Cambrai, which would prove a defining moment for the Republic not only in that it defended its status as the most powerful polity in Italy (albeit in an irreparably crippled form) as well as consecrating France as the Austro-Spanish counterweight, but it also greatly accelerated the development of a semi-professional diplomatic corps both representing the Republic, as well as establishing the formal representation of other European states to the Republic. So the question that would follow is, what did these diplomats (who probably best fit the description you outlined) think of the Republic of Venice?

I look at diplomatic attitudes in the conclusion, after the jump.