Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact 9789048552603

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Vittoria Colonna

Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series editors: James Daybell (Chair), Victoria E. Burke, Svante Norrhem, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks This series provides a forum for studies that investigate women, gender, and/ or sexuality in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for book-length studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including, but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on any part of the world, as well as comparative and global works. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; constructions of femininity and masculinity; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives; gender and architectural spaces (courts, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions.

Vittoria Colonna Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact

Edited by Virginia Cox and Shannon McHugh

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Noli me tangere, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm, 1531–32. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 394 7 e-isbn 978 90 4855 260 3 doi 10.5117/9789463723947 nur 685 © V. Cox, S. McHugh / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

In memory of Giovanna Rabitti (1956–2008)



Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

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Acknowledgements 15 Introduction: The Twenty-First Century Vittoria Colonna Virginia Cox

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Part 1  Literary and Spiritual Sociability 1. The D’Avalos-Colonna Literary Circle: A ‘Renewed Parnassus’

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2. Late Love: Vittoria Colonna and Reginald Pole

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Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi

Ramie Targoff

Part 2 Widowhood 3. Magistra apostolorum: The Virgin Mary in Birgitta of Sweden and Vittoria Colonna

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4. Outdoing Colonna: Widowhood Poetry in the Late Cinquecento

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Unn Falkeid

Anna Wainwright

Part 3 Poetry 5. The Epistolary Vittoria

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6. ‘Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, Victoria pendet’: A Forgotten Spiritual Epigram by Vittoria Colonna

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Maria Serena Sapegno

Veronica Copello

7. Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna: Insights into Early Modern Piety and Poetics Sarah Rolfe Prodan

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Part 4 Art 8. ‘Inscribed Upon Their Hearts’: Copying and the Dissemination of Devotion

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9. Titian, Colonna, and the Gender of Pictorial Devotion

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Jessica Maratsos

Christopher J. Nygren

10. ‘A More Loving and Constant Heart’: Vittoria Colonna, Alfonso d’Avalos, Michelangelo and the Complicated History of Pontormo’s Noli me tangere 229 Dennis Geronimus

Part 5 Readership 11. ‘Leading Others on the Road to Salvation’: Vittoria Colonna and Her Readers Abigail Brundin

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12. ‘In Competition with and Perhaps More Felicitously Than Petrarch’: The Canonization of Vittoria Colonna in Rinaldo Corso’s Tutte le rime (1558) 291 Humberto González Chávez

Part 6  Impact 13. Colonna and Petrarch in the Rime of Lucia Colao Andrea Torre

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14. ‘I Take Thee’: Vittoria Colonna, Conjugal Verse and Male poeti colonnesi 331 Shannon McHugh

15. ‘She Showed the World a Beacon of Female Worth’: Vittoria Colonna in Arcadia

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Volume Bibliography

371

Index of Citations of Colonna’s Letters and Verse

399

Thematic Index

401

Tatiana Crivelli



List of Illustrations

Fig. 6.1.

Vittoria Colonna, ‘Response from the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno to Daniele Fini’. Spiritual epigram (I.437: 209r). Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, Ferrara. Fig. 6.2. Vittoria Colonna, ‘Response from the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno to Daniele Fini’. Spiritual epigram (I.437: 209v). Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, Ferrara. Fig. 8.1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, c. 1540, black chalk on paper, 11.38 in. × 7.44 in. (28.9 × 18.9 cm). Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Fig. 8.2. Copy after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ganymede, sixteenth century, black chalk on off-white antique laid paper, wings of eagle incised with stylus and damaged, parts then retouched, 14.21 in. × 10.63 in. (36.1 × 27 cm). Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museums, Gifts for Special Uses Fund, 1955.75, Boston. Fig. 8.3. Giovanni Bernardi (copy after Michelangelo Buonarroti), The Rape of Ganymede, 1532 or after, bronze, 2.63 in. × 3.56 in. (6.7 × 9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, Washington, D.C. Fig. 8.4. After Donatello, Madonna and Child before a Niche, mid-f ifteenth century, bronze, 3.94 in. × 3.06.in. (10 × 7.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington, D.C. Fig. 8.5. Follower of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, midsixteenth century, gilt bronze, 6.62 in. × 4.5 in. (16.8 × 11.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Henry Victor Burgy, 1901, New York. Fig. 8.6. Central or Northern Italian, Pax with Pietà, c. 1575, gilded bronze, 7.19 in. × 4.94 in. × 2.81 in. (18.3 × 12.6 × 7.1 cm). National Gallery of Art, Gift of Claire, Monica and Antonia Geber in memory of their parents, Anthony and Margaret Mary Geber, Washington, D.C. Fig. 8.7. Handle affixed to back of Figure 8.5. Fig. 8.8. Paduan, Christ’s Body Held by Two Angels, fifteenth century, silvered bronze, 3.94 in. × 3.38 in. (10 × 8.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington, D.C.

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List of Illustr ations

Fig. 8.9.

Albrecht Dürer, The Mass of Saint Gregory, 1511, woodcut, 11.56 in. × 8.12 in. (29.4 × 20.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1917, New York. Fig. 8.10. Marcantonio Raimondi after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Naked Man Viewed from Behind Climbing a River Bank, c. 1509, engraving, 8.25 in. × 5.38 in. (20.9 × 13.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1929, New York. Fig. 8.11. Nicolas Beatrizet after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, 1547, engraving, 14.75 in. × 10.31 in. (37.5 × 26.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1966, New York. Fig. 9.1. Titian, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1531, oil on wood panel. Galleria Palatina di Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Fig. 9.2. Antonio Allegri (called Correggio), Ecce Homo with Pilate and Virgin Mary Fainting, c. 1525–30, oil on panel, 99 × 80 cm. The National Gallery, London. Fig. 9.3. Lorenzo Lotto, Saint Catherine, 1522, oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Fig. 9.4. Titian,   Judith / Salome, c. 1516, oil on canvas. Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome. Fig. 9.5. Nicolò de’ Barbari, Christ and the Adulteress, c. 1505, oil on panel. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Rome. Fig. 9.6. Titian, Christ and the Adulteress, c. 1513, oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Fig. 9.7. Titian, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1565, oil on canvas. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Fig. 9.8. Anonymous, Floor tile depicting the Cruelty of Love, c. 1470, tin-glazed maiolica. Galleria Nazionale, Parma. Fig. 10.1. Rime spirituali, MS containing 103 of her religious sonnets, gifted by Colonna to Michelangelo in 1540–41. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 11539. Fig. 10.2. Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Noli me tangere, 1531–32, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy. Fig. 10.3. Agnolo Bronzino (attrib. to) (copy after MichelangeloPontormo), Noli me tangere, post-1532, oil on panel, 172 × 134 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence.

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List of Illustr ations

Fig. 10.4.

Lavinia Fontana, Noli me tangere, 1581, oil on canvas, 80 × 65.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Fra Angelico, Noli me tangere, c. 1438–40, fresco. Cell Fig. 10.5. 1, Convent of San Marco, Florence. Fig. 10.6. Spanish, Plaque with the Journey to Emmaus and the Noli me tangere, c. 1115–20, ivory, overall: 27 × 13.4 × 1.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fig. 10.7. Hans Holbein the Younger, Noli me tangere, 1526–28, oil on panel, 76.7 × 95.8 cm. Queen’s Drawing Room, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust. Fig. 10.8. Jacopo da Pontormo, Venus Kissed by Cupid, 1532–34, oil on panel, 128 × 194 cm. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. Fig. 10.9. Michelangelo, Study for the Risen Christ, 1532, red chalk on paper, 23.5 × 8.2 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Fig. 10.10. Michelangelo, Study for the Risen Christ, 1532, red chalk on paper, 14.8 × 23.7 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Fig. 10.11. Jacopo da Pontormo, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1519–23, oil on panel, 85 × 191 cm. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Fig. 10.12. Michelangelo, Entombment, 1500–1, oil on panel, 161.7 × 149.9 cm. The National Gallery, London. Fig. 10.13. Agnolo Bronzino, Noli me tangere, 1561, oil on panel, 289 × 194 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 10.14. Alessandro Allori, Noli me tangere, early 1560s–early 1570s, oil on copper, 36.5 × 31.4 cm. Sold, Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2012. Fig. 10.15. Nicolas Beatrizet (after Michelangelo), Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, c. 1546, engraving, 38.8 × 28.7 cm. British Museum, London. Fig. 10.16. Michelangelo, Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, c. 1542, black chalk on paper, 46.7 × 33. 7 cm. Private collection. Fig. 10.17. Master of the Saint Ursula Legend (central panel, The Sudarium borne by angels) and Filippino Lippi (wings, showing Christ and the Samaritan Woman and the Noli me tangere), Del Pugliese Triptych, 1490–1500, oil on panel, central panel: 49.5 × 31.5 cm, left panel: 56 × 15.5 cm, right panel: 55.5 × 15 cm.

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Fig. 10.18. Fig. 10.19. Fig. 10.20.

Fig. 10.21. Fig. 10.22. Fig. 11.1.

Fig. 11.2

Fig. 14.1

Fig. 14.2

List of Illustr ations

Seminario Patriarcale, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana, Venice. Cima da Conegliano, Doubting of Saint Thomas with Bishop Magno, 1505, oil on panel, 215 × 151 cm. Gallerie dell’Academia, Venice. Cristofano Allori, The Penitent Magdalene Lying in a Landscape, c. 1600, oil on copper, 29.6 × 43 cm. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Detail, Noli me tangere, 1531–32, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy. Lucas van Leyden, Noli me tangere, 1519, etching, 13.2 × 16.8 cm. Albertina, Vienna. Skull of Mary Magdalene, discovered in 1200s, inset into reliquary. Basilica of Saint Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Provence, France. Giovanbattista Vitale, Rime spirituali di diversi eccellenti poeti toscani. Naples, Horatio Salviani, 1574. Page view with thematic annotation. Case Y 7184 7465, Newberry Library, Chicago. Ferrante Carafa, Le rime spirituali della vera gloria humana in libri quattro, et in altrettanti della divina. Genoa, Antonio Belloni, 1559. Detail of index with thematic annotations. Case Y 712.C234, Newberry Library, Chicago. Bernardo Tasso, Rime di Messer Bernardo Tasso. Divise in cinque libri nuovamente stampate. Venice, Gabriele Giolito, 1560. Page view showing title of sequence on the death of the poet’s wife (V.79). Harvard Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA. Berardino Rota, Sonetti del S[ignor] Berardino Rota in morte della S[igno]ra Portia Capece sua moglie. Naples, Mattia Cancer, 1560. Title page. Harvard Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA.

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Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the Provost’s Global Research Initiative of New York University and the University of Massachusetts Boston, Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Strategic Initiatives and Dean of Graduate Studies, for funding that made possible the development of this volume. They also wish to extend their gratitude to Linda Mills and the NYU Office of Global Programs, as well as the staff of NYU Florence (Villa La Pietra), and particularly Lucia Ferroni and Alice Fischetti, for research and administrative support at an early stage in the project. Thanks are also due to the anonymous readers and the members of the editorial board for the series Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World who commented on this volume in manuscript. Their input was invaluable in shaping the finished volume. Chantal Nicolaes of Amsterdam University Press was tireless in her supervision of copyediting and typsetting; Troy Tower of Humanist for Hire helped immensely by creating a thorough and thoughtful index. Finally, we would like to thank Erika Gaffney for her exceptional support and guidance as editor.



Introduction: The Twenty-First Century Vittoria Colonna Virginia Cox

Abstract Although—unusually, for an early modern woman writer—Vittoria Colonna has long been considered part of the canon, several factors have inhibited a true appreciation of her importance as a literary innovator and model. The current critical moment is conducive to a re-examination of her significance, in the light of recent research on the early modern Italian tradition of women’s writing, on the Catholic Reform movement and its literary expression, and on developments in Italian literature in the last four decades of the sixteenth century. Consideration of these factors reveal Colonna as a figure of wide-reaching influence in her time and a powerful shaping influence on later traditions of Italian literature, in the late Renaissance and beyond. Keywords: Vittoria Colonna, religious verse, Petrarchism, women writers, literary canons

Vittoria Colonna is perhaps the outstanding female figure of the Italian Renaissance, celebrated as a leading Petrarchist poet and an important figure in the Italian Reform movement. Colonna was also remarkable for the quality of her relationships, as attested in her letters and epistolary verse. She corresponded with figures of the stature of Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Bembo, Reginald Pole, Marguerite de Navarre and Charles V, and she had a famously intimate friendship with Michelangelo Buonarroti, to whom an important manuscript collection of her verse is addressed. Her connections with the world of art were many and complex, and several important commissions are associated with her name.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_intro

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Colonna’s impact as poet, both immediate and retrospective, was crucially interconnected with her social and moral persona, or rather the intriguing series of personae she inhabited across her life: as devoted young Penelope, holding court in Ischia in her husband’s absence; as Artemisia-like incarnation of inconsolable widowhood; as religious guru and icon, compared by Luca Contile to the Queen of Sheba in her spiritual wisdom.1 Used with due historical sensitivity, the modern notion of celebrity can properly be used to describe her; certainly, by the time of her death, she enjoyed genuine national fame among the fairly broad cultural elite constituted by the literate in Italy (and seemingly rather beyond it, among those who accessed literary culture orally, as Abigail Brundin’s essay for this volume suggests).2 Among women writers of the period, her only true counterpart in terms of the interaction of literary and extra-literary celebrity is Marguerite de Navarre, to whom she wrote a revealing letter on gender and fame and the role of ethical exemplars in self-modelling.3 Within Italy, Veronica Gambara offers the closest point of comparison, as a political actor and cultural patron, as well as a poet of note. 4 Like Gambara and Navarre, Colonna is unusual among early modern women writers in that she can in no way be figured as a modern ‘discovery’ or ‘rediscovery’. She was the object of immense admiration during her lifetime, and she has remained part of the canon ever since. The low point of her history was undoubtedly the seventeenth century (no new edition of her work appeared between 1586 and 1692), but she was hardly forgotten even during this era.5 From the time of the eighteenth-century Arcadia movement onwards, meanwhile, she has remained a salient presence within Italian literary history, in terms of editions, biographies, anthologization, 1 On Colonna as Penelope and Artemisia, see Cox 2016a: 476, 490, 493–4, 499. For Contile’s remarks, see Asso 2009: 230. 2 For discussion of the applicability of the notion of celebrity to early modern culture, see Rublack 2011; García-Reidy 2018, esp. 165–6. 3 Cox 2016a: 472–4. For a comparative discussion of Colonna and Navarre, see Rabitti 2006: 482–91. 4 On the role of Colonna and Gambara in establishing the persona of the female poet in Italy in the 1530s, see Cox 2008: 64–79. For a study and bilingual edition of Gambara, see Gambara 2014. Colonna’s political agency and her public role within the Colonna clan have been studied less than other aspects of her persona, though see Robin 2007: 79–101; D’Amelia 2016; Magalhães 2019. 5 On Colonna’s stable place in the canon, see Cox 2005a. On her fortunes in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Cox 2008: 170, 198–200, 218, 226, 230–1; Cox 2011: 2–3, 56–7; Cox 2016a: 471. See also the essays by Abigail Brundin, Shannon McHugh, Andrea Torre, and Anna Wainwright in this volume.

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and research.6 Nor was her fortune limited to Italy, either during her lifetime or later. She enjoyed a remarkable period of interest in Victorian England, for example, as an incarnation of the ‘matchless beauty of widowhood’ and as Michelangelo’s great, Beatrice-like love.7 Despite the relative stability of her canonical status, it still seems fair to say that recent decades have seen a sharp improvement in Colonna’s fortunes, after a long period in the twentieth century when she was the subject of respectful, but rather static, critical interest, running along wellestablished and relatively narrow lines. This is especially true of studies of Colonna as a writer, as opposed to a religious actor and thinker.8 As a poet, Colonna suffered from the negative evaluation placed on Petrarchism for much of the twentieth century, as a tradition of verse that privileged formal correctness and polish over inspiration, imitation over originality, and artifice over ‘sincerity’. As a historical personality, Colonna also suffered somewhat from the very qualities that contributed to the appeal that she held for readers of earlier centuries: her high birth, her moral uprightness, her strenuous incarnation of faithful and devoted widowhood, her nun-like, ascetic religiosity. Other sixteenth-century women writers, such as Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco, proved more appropriable to post-Romantic models of critical reading and biography than either Colonna or Gambara.9 Both Stampa and Franco could be cast as fresh and original voices within the lyric tradition, and as relatively low-born, socially marginal women who used their talents to stake a place within the cultural elite of their city. Beside the passionate Stampa and the witty, outrageous Franco, Colonna and Gambara could look chilly and off-putting: prim, silver-spooned darlings of a patriarchal culture whose values they unthreateningly embraced. Several factors in the scholarship of the past few decades have enabled a fresh look at Colonna. First, studies of Petrarchism have finally shaken off the last remnants of the legacy of post-Romantic diffidence. As scholarly 6 On Colonna’s reception in the Italian eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Chemello 2000; Teotochi Albrizzi 2009; Chemello 2016: 11–3. See also Tatiana Crivelli’s essay in this volume. For a comparative view of Colonna’s critical history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, relative to other early modern female poets, see Cox (ed.) 2013: 38–44. 7 See Østermark-Johansen 1998: 141–90; Østermark-Johansen 1999; Strowe 2018. 8 Key in reviving interest in Colonna’s poetry in the 1980s were Carlo Dionisotti’s influential 1981 essay on her poetic relationship with Bembo (Dionisotti 2002) and Alan Bullock’s critical edition (Colonna 1982). Prior to this, Thérault 1968 is an important study of Colonna’s literary circle in Ischia. 9 See McHugh 2013: 345–6. The same applies, for very different reasons, both to traditional Italian criticism, influenced by Benedetto Croce’s notion of letteratura femminile (on which see Cox (ed.) 2013: 41–2), and to much Anglophone feminist criticism of the 1980s and 90s.

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interests have shifted away from a prescriptive conception of lyric poetry as the pure and untrammelled expression of a supposed inner self, Petrarchism has revealed itself as a fascinating literary and sociohistorical phenomenon: a language that allowed considerable flexibility of usage, beneath an apparent uniformity, and that lent itself admirably to the crafting of social identities, by both entitled and less entitled figures. We come to the lyric poetry of the sixteenth century with a more varied set of questions than were addressed to it in the past: questions about the ways in which this highly codified language could be bent to particular poets’ social and cultural and political agendas; questions about how this poetry was materially produced and circulated, and how it was read and recited and generally put to use. This development has immensely enriched studies of Colonna, as well as that of other poets of the era. To take one example, Colonna has benefitted greatly from the current fascination with the material circulation of texts, and the relationship between print and manuscript, and between elite and popular print culture. The extreme complexity and intricacy of the history of the transmission of Colonna’s verse, which makes her something of a nightmare for prospective editors, lends her absorbing interest as a case study for anyone concerned with reception and circulation.10 At the same time, critics’ increasing alertness to the sociohistorical dimension of Petrarchist lyric has helped expose the originality and historical import of the identity work carried out by Colonna in her verse, and the immense role she played in carving out a place for the female speaking subject within a tradition up to her time of writing that was almost exclusively male before her time.11 A further scholarly tendency in recent decades that has benefitted studies of Colonna is, of course, the vast surge of interest in women’s social roles and cultural contributions that we have seen in all humanities fields from the 1980s onwards. This trend is perceptible to a limited extent within the Italian tradition of scholarship, but it is far more salient elsewhere, particularly in the English-speaking world, where studies of women, and, more broadly, of gender, have transformed literary-critical methodologies in profound and far-reaching ways. Where studies of Italian literary history are concerned, a massive, collective work of rediscovery has taken place over recent decades, which has 10 See Brundin 2016b and Crivelli 2016 for exhaustive overviews of the circulation of Colonna’s verse in manuscript and in print in the sixteenth century; see also Lalli 2015; Toscano 2017; Cajelli 2018, 106–9; Richardson 2020, 4–9, 95; and the chapters by Abigail Brundin and Humberto González Chávez in this volume. 11 See Rabitti 2000; Sapegno 2003; Cox 2005a; Cox 2005b; Cox 2008: 64–79; Stella 2019.

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cumulatively transformed our understanding of the tradition of women’s writing in Renaissance Italy. To summarize briefly, it has emerged that there was a far stronger tradition of writing, and especially published writing, by women in Italy than has often been thought in the past. Further, it is now clear that this tradition was far more durable over time than has often been thought; it began in the fifteenth century and lasted right through until the early seventeenth century, after which stylistic shifts and a ‘misogynistic turn’ within elite Italian culture effectively marginalized women writers until their emphatic return in the following century.12 Although the tradition of women’s writing has revealed itself as especially strong and precocious in Italy, scholars have documented the emergence of important traditions of women’s writing in other European contexts, especially from the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.13 We now have a much richer and more comprehensive picture of the extent and shape of women’s participation in literary production in the entire early modern period, across Europe and beyond. This reframing of women’s literary history in Italy has important consequences for Colonna’s reputation. Throughout much of the later twentieth century, the standard historiographical position was that women emerged as published writers in Italy only during a brief, intense season in the 1540s and 50s, with no more than a few outliers outside these chronological parameters, notably Veronica Franco in the 1570s.14 Even within this limited historical time frame, Vittoria Colonna’s importance was already clear; she was the first identified woman poet whose work appeared in print, in 1538, and the success of her work encouraged publishers to seek out and publish other women writers. Now that we can see the longer vista, however, Colonna’s historical importance emerges even more clearly. She was the key prototype and inspiration for later Italian women writers down to the eighteenth century, in ways that can be traced very clearly at a textual level, as the essays in this volume by Tatiana Crivelli, Andrea Torre and Anna Wainwright intriguingly illustrate. Indeed, as Crivelli’s and Wainwright’s essays show, later women writers not only imitated Colonna in their verse as a means of self-authorization; they sometimes also incorporated tributes to her 12 For overviews, see Cox 2008 and 2011. On the contrasting place of gender within Englishlanguage and Italian-language studies of Italian literature, see Cox and Ferrari (eds.) 2012: 7-29. See also, more generally, on women’s relationship with textual culture in Italy, Richardson 2020. 13 Recent overviews, citing earlier bibliography, include Phillippy (ed.) 2018 (England); Van Elk 2017 (England and Holland); Baranda and Cruz (eds.) 2017 (Spain). 14 This position was influentially stated in Dionisotti 1999: 237–9 (first published in 1965).

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auctoritas as poet and positioned themselves explicitly in her wake.15 As Giovanna Rabitti first observed in the 1990s, this self-modelling on Colonna had an existential, as well as a poetic, component; her moral exemplarity, as faithful and devoted wife and widow, as stately public figure, and as model of piety, made her a valuable source of cultural capital for women down to the age of Arcadia and beyond. This material is of interest beyond its contribution to the study of Colonna, important though it is in that regard. An instance as clear as this of an enduring and articulated tradition of female-female imitation and citation offers a challenge to those approaches to women’s writing that tend to position female writers solely in relation to ‘mainstream’ (i.e. male) literary models, whether they are positioned as disciples or as rebels. While no one would deny the immense formative influence of Dante and Petrarch on the Italian lyric tradition, both male-authored and female-authored—nor, later, the influence of Bembo, and Tasso, and Marino—female poets’ strategies of imitatio are emerging as more complex and gender-inflected than has tended to be assumed in the past. In view of this, it may be of interest to Colonna studies in future to investigate Colonna’s own influences more closely, with an eye to possible maternal, as well as paternal, lines in her literary and existential DNA. A striking contribution to this task is Unn Falkeid’s essay in this volume on the parallels between Colonna’s religious persona and that of a previous, Rome-based, pious aristocratic widow: Saint Birgitta, or Bridget, of Sweden, who may well have served her as a model. Further productive lines of inquiry might lead back through Colonna’s own literal maternal genealogy, which boasted an extraordinary line of women distinguished by learning and piety, stretching back to her great-great-great-grandmother Battista da Montefeltro (1384–1447), who ended her life a Clarissan nun and vernacular religious poet, and incorporating also, more tangentially, the nun and mystic Camilla Battista da Varano (1458–1524).16 In addition to the developments noted above, a further recent phenomenon within Italian literary historiography that has significant implications for our understanding of Colonna’s historical importance is the emerging 15 For further discussion and exemplification on this point, see Rabitti 1992: 149–55; Rabitti 2000; Cox 2005a; Cox 2008: 114–5. 16 The writings of Varano, a cousin of Vittoria Colonna’s great-grandmother Costanza Varano (1426–47), who was also famous for her learning, circulated widely in the early sixteenth century; see Dejure 2015; Hudon 2018. On Battista da Montefeltro’s life, see Falcioni 2012; on her religious verse (still relatively under-studied), Sanzotta 2010: 73–6, citing previous bibliography. Colonna’s maternal forebears also include Costanza Varano’s daughter Battista Sforza, Countess of Urbino (1446–72), on whose humanistic learning see Cox 2016c.

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scholarly interest in the long-neglected literature of the later sixteenth century in Italy. The religious literature of this period, in particular, was condemned to near-oblivion within the late nineteenth and twentiethcentury critical traditions, as a result of ideological prejudices regarding the supposed deleterious effects of the Counter-Reformation on Italian culture. Over the past fifteen years or so, this prejudice has begun to be dispelled, and an ever-increasing flow of high-quality scholarship is now appearing in this area, mainly in Italy to date, but also, to a more limited extent, beyond. Among the contributors to this volume are the editors of a recent volume on Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation, which promises to help bring this still somewhat arcane field of study into the academic mainstream within the English-speaking world.17 As the literature of this later period becomes more generally known, Colonna’s status as poet will inevitably grow. Rather than being seen as one of a group of highly talented mid-century Petrarchist poets, most salient for her gender, she will increasingly come to be seen as a pivotal figure, anticipating and influencing many trends of the later sixteenth century. Most strikingly, she stands at the head of an important and innovative new sub-genre of lyric poetry, the tradition of Petrarchizing religious verse known as rime spirituali, which flourished powerfully across the second half of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth-century Baroque. The originality and richness of the poetic language Colonna developed in her religious verse has come to be increasingly recognized in recent years, but the full extent of her influence on the subsequent tradition of religious lyric is only now beginning to become clear.18 Poets and readers of rime spirituali, not only in Italy but throughout Europe, recognized Colonna’s stature as originator of the genre. Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–79) alludes to her priority in this regard in the dedicatory letter to his groundbreaking ‘moral’ collection, Cento sonetti (1549), noting that Colonna ‘had shown the world that sonnets do not need always to be matched to amorous subject matter, but they are apt for any other honourable subject, however holy

17 See Innovation. Two essays in the volume, Cox 2020 and Quondam 2020, address the historiographical issues noted in this paragraph. See also Ditchfield 2008. 18 The innovative quality of Colonna’s poetic language more generally—and the inadequacy of ‘Petrarchism’ as a formula for fully comprehending the work of a poet who also draws powerfully on other sources, such as Dante’s Commedia—is emphasized in Sapegno 2018. On Colonna’s religious poetry, see Bardazzi 2001; Colonna 2005; Brundin 2008; Brundin 2016a; Cavallini 2016; Sapegno 2016: esp. 179–94; Copello 2020; Colonna 2020, and the chapter by Sarah Rolfe Prodan in this volume. For a full survey of the critical literature, see Cajelli 2018.

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and grave it may be’.19 The religious poet and theorist Gabriele Fiamma (1533–85), in his influential 1570 Rime spirituali, authoritatively defined her as ‘the first to write with dignity on spiritual matters in rhyme’.20 Outside Italy, we find a similar preeminence accorded to Colonna by the Spanish Dominican Pedro de Encinas in a universal history of Christian poetry, of 1597. Encinas places Colonna—whom he ranks as the stylistic equal of Petrarch—at the head of the vernacular tradition of religious verse, followed by Fiamma himself, and Luigi Tansillo.21 Interesting hands-on evidence of Colonna’s influence on the tradition of rime spirituali is offered by a working manuscript by Bernardo Tasso (1493– 1569), dating to the mid-1550s, when Tasso was composing the influential psalm translations included in his 1560 Rime. This contains two pages of citations drawn from Colonna’s religious lyrics, presumably copied as material for reuse.22 It was not only with regard to the tradition of spiritual lyric that Colonna was recognized as a model and an innovator. A further thematic development in later sixteenth-century poetry that attests vividly to her impact is the new tradition of lyric verse celebrating marital love, taken up first by a number of younger male poets in Colonna’s circles in Naples, including Bernardo Tasso and Berardino Rota (1508–75), and later practised by both male and female poets, notably Francesca Turina (1553–1641), Giuliano Goselini (1525–87), and Orsatto Giustinian (1538–1603).23 Colonna’s poems for her dead husband, Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos (1489–1525), often referred to as her rime amorose or rime vedovili, reconfigured marriage as a passionate, intense, spiritually defining love affair, thus making this most un-Petrarchan of experiences ‘speakable’ in Petrarchan language. Thematics apart, it is not uncommon to find Colonna cited as stylistically exemplary, a model to rank with the 19 ‘ha fatto conoscere al mondo che non è necessario, come stimano alcuni, che a sola materia amorosa s’accommodino i sonetti sempre, ma ad ogni altro onorato soggetto son atti ancora, per santo e grave che egli sia’. Piccolomini 2015: 53–4. It is possible that Colonna’s influence on Piccolomini extended to his choice to publish a collection of a hundred sonnets, given that Bembo possessed a manuscript of hers around 1540 comprising ‘a hundred very beautiful sonnets … all religious and holy’ (cento molto belli sonetti … tutti religiosi e santi). See Toscano 2017: 234; and also Albonico 2006: 43. 20 ‘la prima … a scrivere con dignità in rima le cose spirituali’. Fiamma 1570: letter to the reader, unnumbered. For discussion, see Cox 2011: 34–6. Both Piccolomini and Fiamma dedicated their works to younger members of the Colonna family, respectively her niece and nephew, Vittoria and Marcantonio Colonna. 21 Núñez Rivera 2010: 32. 22 Morace 2015: 70. The MS is Biblioteca Oliveriana, Pesaro, 1399. On Tasso’s poetic relationship with Colonna see, more generally, Magalhães 2020. Another important spiritual lyricist influenced by Colonna is Angelo Grillo (1557–1629): see McHugh 2020: 155-8. 23 See the essay by Shannon McHugh in this volume.

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finest poets of the Italian lyric tradition: a singular distinction, within a culture in which it was more customary to keep canons of male and female poets distinct.24 It can hardly be over-emphasized how important these findings are for the study of Italian literature. Scholars of English and French literature are accustomed to thinking about the fundamental role that female authors played in the early development of the novel, but it is not easy within the Italian tradition to identify literary genres or traditions within which women have been recognized as progenitors and leaders, rather than as disciples or followers. The only exception is medieval mystical writing, where women had an important role in the shaping of the tradition, although the equivocal character of many texts within that tradition, which often reach us in the transcriptions of mystics’ male confessors or associates, makes the parallel somewhat inexact.25 Thinking of Colonna not—or not exclusively—as an imitator of Petrarch, but as a powerful model for imitation herself for male and female writers of future generations is an exercise that involves rethinking or disrupting the history of Italian literature as it has generally been told, at least within the nineteenth and twentieth-century critical traditions. An essay in this volume that eloquently exemplifies this disruptive effect is Tatiana Crivelli’s revisionist account of the history of the Arcadia movement, emphasizing the central role that Colonna played within the literary ideals of the first custodian of the Arcadian Academy, Giovan Mario Crescimbeni (1663–1728). In addition to the newer trends highlighted here, current work on Colonna is also enabled by longer-established developments, such as the tradition of studies on the Italian Reform movement, dating back to the studies of Delio Cantimori in the 1930s. This tradition has continued to flourish in recent years and has broadened in scope and sophistication; it now extends beyond the field of religious history, where it originated, into fields such as literary studies and art history.26 Of special relevance to this volume is the vein of 24 Piccolomini names Colonna alongside Petrarch and Pietro Bembo as the three finest Italian lyric poets of the modern era: see Piccolomini 2015: 56; cfr. Refini 2007, 26–8. For examples of tributes to Colonna’s stylistic excellence in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Cox 2011: 56–7. 25 The extent of Colonna’s acquaintance with the medieval tradition of female mysticism is an interesting one. See Chemello 2016, 25–9 on Colonna’s spiritual letters, which reprise a common mystic genre; also, Unn Falkeid’s essay in this volume. 26 This literature is too copious to survey in this context. On Colonna’s relationship to Italian Reform contexts, see, for example, Bardazzi 2001; Brundin 2008; Forcellino 2009; Bowd 2016; Camaioni 2016; Campi 2016; Fragnito 2016, all building on important earlier work of the 1980s and

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studies that focuses on the distinctive religious culture of the Reformist circles to which Colonna and Michelangelo belonged and the ways in which it influenced their artistic and literary output.27 Religious history similarly provides a rich context for the studies of other art works associated with Colonna or known to be commissioned on her behalf. As this rapid survey indicates, the present moment is a highly propitious one for studies of Vittoria Colonna, whose stature as one of the pivotal figures of sixteenth-century Italian elite culture has perhaps never been clearer. The past fifteen years have seen the publication of the first English-language monograph devoted to Colonna in over a century; of a comprehensive ‘companion’, covering all aspects of her life and religious and cultural engagement; of an important volume of essays reporting the proceedings of an international conference held at the American Academy in Rome; and of an English-language biography, which will do a great deal to extend her reputation beyond specialist academic circles.28 A new Italian biography has also recently appeared, focused particularly on Colonna’s artistic connections and her relationship with Michelangelo.29 Bilingual, annotated editions of substantial portions of Colonna’s verse, and a selection of her letters, are now available for Anglophone readers.30 In Italian, the first exercises in detailed annotation of Colonna’s verse have appeared in the last few years, including a complete annotated edition of the important manuscript of her poetry assembled as a gift for Michelangelo (Vat. lat. 11539).31 Work is also

90s by Massimo Firpo and Concetta Ranieri. See also Cajelli 2018, 115–18 for a full bibliographical survey. 27 See, for example, Nagel 1997; D’Elia 2006; Brundin 2008; Prodan 2014; Forcellino 2016; Moroncini 2017; also Cajelli 2018, 118–22, for further bibliography and discussion. 28 See Brundin 2008; Companion; Sapegno; Targoff 2018. Other recent conferences centred on Colonna are listed in Cajelli 2018, 124–5. Cajelli’s article offers an invaluable survey of recent trends in the study of Colonna’s life and works. See also Volta 2018 for detailed discussion of studies on Colonna published in 2016–7, and Magalhães 2019, 139, n2 for citations of works on her from 2018–9. Other recent publications of note are Mattioda 2016; Copello 2019a, b, and c; Stella 2019; and Copello 2020. 29 Donati 2019. Although useful, Donati’s biography has several eccentric aspects, including a relative lack of interest in Colonna’s poetry and a curious insistence on her physical unattractiveness (which the author represents as a corrective to other scholars’ purported idealization of her beauty). 30 The main bilingual editions are Colonna 2005, Cox (ed.) 2013, passim, and Colonna 2021. For the edition of the letters, see Colonna 2022. 31 Colonna 2020. See also Chemello 2014; Bardazzi 2016; Mazzoncini 2017.

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progressing on a complete edition of her correspondence.32 This is not to deny that further work is needed to bring scholarship on Colonna up to the level one might expect for a writer of her stature and influence. To state only the most obvious gaps, a reliable critical edition of Colonna’s collected verse is urgently required, to replace Alan Bullock’s much-criticized edition of 1982, while no modern edition exists to date of her religious prose writings, other than an English translation of her Pianto sulla passione di Christo.33 The aim of the present volume is, on the one hand, to reflect the current, flourishing state of Italian and Anglophone studies of Colonna; and, on the other, to point to new directions for the future. A groundbreaking feature of the volume, picked out in the title, is the richness of the attention it devotes to Colonna’s impact, both on her contemporaries and on future generations of readers and writers. The essays by Tatiana Crivelli, Shannon McHugh, Andrea Torre and Anna Wainwright focus on Colonna’s influence on later poetic traditions; while those by Abigail Brundin and Humberto González Chávez offer perspectives on her contemporary reception, and Jessica Maratsos’s contribution examines in parallel the reception of Colonna’s and Michelangelo’s religious art. In addition to their value in illuminating Colonna’s place in literary history, the chapters by McHugh, Torre and Wainwright offer rare instances of detailed studies of later sixteenth-century literature, focused on authors such as Goselini, Giustinian, Turina, and Lucia Colao (fl. 1600), who are likely to be mere names—at most—even to specialists in early modern Italian literature. A further aim of the volume is to explore and illuminate Colonna’s social and religious personae, and her networks and patronage, in a way that can help to illuminate her complex status within Italian culture during her lifetime. Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi examines the key locus for Colonna’s early formation in the ‘court’ of Costanza d’Avalos on Ischia, emphasizing its connections with the humanist academy of Giovanni Pontano in Naples. Ramie Targoff reconstructs Colonna’s relationship with Reginald Pole, one of the most important and charged of her spiritual friendships. Anna Wainwright and Unn Falkeid locate Colonna within the important context of widowhood, so key to her public and private identity in later life: a point illustrated also by Veronica Copello’s examination of a little-studied exchange of Latin epigrams between Colonna and the Ferrarese humanist Daniele 32 Interim publications relating to this important project may be found in Copello 2019a and b. 33 Colonna 2008. The critical literature generated by Bullock’s edition is discussed in Cajelli 2018: 109–12.

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Fini. Sarah Rolfe Prodan looks at Colonna’s religious writings through the lens of her use of the Bible and of biblical figures, arguing that they enact a spiritually engaged form of reading and meditation, implicitly proposed as a model to others as well as a personal spiritual exercise. Finally, the essays by Dennis Geronimus and Christopher Nygren examine commissions of religious paintings associated with Colonna, respectively by Pontormo and Titian, in ways that illuminate both the artistic language and the social and religious contexts of these works. Two points about Colonna come through powerfully within the essays in this volume, in addition to the volume’s central argument about her profound and durable influence on Italian culture. One is the extent and richness of her social engagement: a detail that editorial choices of her verse, historical and modern, have often conspired to obscure. As Maria Serena Sapegno underlines in her chapter on the ‘epistolary Vittoria’, Colonna’s verse was originally written and circulated within the ‘thick’, sociable, dialogic context characteristic of scribal publication. It attests, just as much as her letters, to the extraordinary network of religious and secular relationships which nurtured her thought and writings, and which also—as Nygren’s and Geronimus’s chapters emphasize—served as a vibrant context for the generation of art. The second point that comes through within the volume’s chapters as a whole is the novelty, complexity, and multi-facetedness of the cultural archetype Colonna represented: a factor that accounts in great part for her utility as a figure to ‘think with’, both for her contemporaries and followers, and for us, as critics and readers today.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion DBI GSLI Innovation Sapegno

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome. Giornale storico della letteratura italiana Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020) ed. S. McHugh and A. Wainwright. Newark, DE. Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

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Primary works Colonna, V. (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. ––– (2008) ‘The plaint of the Marchesa di Pescara on the Passion of Christ’, in Who is Mary? Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary, ed. and tr. S. Haskins. Chicago: 47–66 ––– (2020) La raccolta di rime per Michelangelo, ed. V. Copello. Florence. ––– (2021) Poems of Widowhood: A Bilingual Edition of the 1538 Rime, ed. R. Targoff and T. Tower, tr. R. Targoff. Toronto. ––– (2022) Selected Letters, 1523–1546, ed. V. Copello, tr. A. Brundin. New York and Toronto. Fiamma, G. (1570) Rime spirituali del R.D. Gabriel Fiamma … esposte da lui medesimo. Venice. Gambara, V. (2014) Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. M. Martin and P. Ugolini. Toronto. Piccolomini, A. (2015) Cento sonetti, ed. F. Tomasi. Geneva.

Secondary works Albonico, S. (2006) Ordine e numero. Studi sul libro di poesia e raccolte poetiche nel Cinquecento. Alessandria. Asso, C. (2009) ‘Appunti per i Dialogi spirituali’, in Luca Contile da Cetona all’Europa, ed. R. Gigliucci. Manziana: 173–239. Baranda, N., and A. J. Cruz (eds.) (2017) The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women’s Writing. London. Bardazzi, G. (2001) ‘Le rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna e Bernardino Ochino’, Italique 4: 61–101. ––– (2016) ‘Florilegio colonnese. Trenta sonetti commentati di Vittoria Colonna’, Per leggere 30: 7–70. Bowd, S. (2016) ‘Prudential friendship and religious reform: Vittoria Colonna and Gasparo Contarini’, in Companion: 347–70. Brundin, A. (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Aldershot. ––– (2016a) ‘Poesia come devozione: leggere le rime di Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 161–75. ––– (2016b) ‘Vittoria Colonna in manuscript’, in Companion: 39–68. Cajelli, M. (2018), ‘Una declinazione del petrarchismo nel Cinquecento: le Rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna’, Petrarchesca 6: 103–25.

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Camaioni, M. (2016) ‘Per “sfiammeggiar di un vivo e ardente amore”. Vittoria Colonna, Bernardino Ochino e la Maddalena’, in El Orbe Católico: trasformaciones, continuidades, tensiones y formas de convivencia entre Europa y América (siglos IV–XIX), ed. M. Lupi and C. Rolle. Santiago de Chile: 105–60. Campi, E. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Bernardino Ochino’, in Companion: 371–98. Cavallini, C. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna, femme/poète “spirituale” et les Rime spirituali di sette poeti illustri di Scipione Ammirato (1569)’, in Les Muses sacrées. Poésie et théâtre de la Réforme entre France et Italie, ed. V. Ferrer and R. Gorris Camos. Geneva: 183–202. Chemello, A. (2000) ‘La biografia come rispecchiamento. La vita di Vittoria Colonna di Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi’, in A. Chemello and L. Ricaldone, Geografie e genealogie letterarie. Erudite, biografe, croniste, narratrici, épistolières, utopiste tra Settecento e Ottocento. Padua: 115–35. ––– (2014) ‘Vittoria Colonna’, in Liriche del Cinquecento, ed. M. Farnetti and L. Fortini. Rome: 63–128. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna’s epistolary works’, in Companion: 11–38. Copello, V. (2019a) ‘Aggiornamenti sul carteggio di Vittoria Colonna. Parte I’, Nuova rivista di letteratura italiana 22/1: 151–81. ––– (2019b) ‘Aggiornamenti sul carteggio di Vittoria Colonna. Parte II’, Nuova rivista di letteratura italiana 22/2: 85–119. ––– (2019c) ‘Costanza d’Avalos (1460–1541): “letras” e “valor guerrero” alla corte di Ischia’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 131/2: 343–60. ––– (2020) ‘Per un commento alle rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna: considerazioni a partire dal sonetto S1: 52’, Schifanoia 58/59: 175–81. Cox, V. (2005a) ‘Women writers and canons in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak Histories: Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. P. J. Benson and V. Kirkham. Ann Arbor: 14-31. ––– (2005b) ‘Sixteenth-century women Petrarchists and the legacy of Laura’, in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35/3: 583–606. ––– (2008) Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore. ––– (2011) The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. ––– (2016c) ‘Cicero at court: Martino Filetico’s Iocundissimae disputationes’, in The Afterlife of Cicero, ed. G. Manuwald. London: 46–66. ––– (2020) ‘Re-thinking Counter-Reformation literature’, in Innovation: 15–55. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Cox, V. and C. Ferrari (eds.) (2012) Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies. Bologna.

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Crivelli, T. (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. D’Amelia, M. (2016) ‘L’orgoglio delle origini. Prestigio e interessi familiari in Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 85–116. D’Elia, U. R. (2006) ‘Drawing Christ’s blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59/1: 90–129. Dejure, A. (2015) ‘Per l’edizione dei Dolori mentali di Gesù nella sua Passione di Camilla Battista da Varano. Aspetti della tradizione e note linguistiche’, La parola nel testo 19: 49–60. Dionisotti, C. (1999) ‘La letteratura italiana nell’età del Concilio di Trento’ (1965), in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, 2nd edn. Turin: 227–54. ––– (2002) ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’ (1981), in Scritti sul Bembo, ed. C. Vela. Turin: 115–40. Ditchfield, S. (2008) ‘In Sarpi’s shadow: coping with Trent the Italian way’, in Studi in memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli. Milan: 585–606. Donati, A. (2019), Vittoria Colonna e l’eredità degli spirituali. Rome. Falcioni, A. (2012) ‘Montefeltro, Battista da’, in DBI 76. Forcellino, M. (2009) Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e gli ‘spirituali’. Religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni Quaranta. Rome. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo: drawings and paintings’ in Companion: 271–313. Fragnito, G. (2016) ‘“Per lungo e dubbioso sentero”: l’itinerario spirituale di Vittoria Colonna’ in Sapegno: 177–213. García-Reidy, A. (2018) ‘Celebrities and the stage: theatrical stardom in early modern Spain’, Renaissance Studies 32/2: 165–82. Hudon, W. (2018) ‘“In the end, God helped me defeat myself”: autobiographical writings of Camilla Battista da Varano’, Religions 9/3: 65. Lalli, R. (2015) ‘“Una maniera diversa dalla prima”: Francesco della Torre, Carlo Gualteruzzi, e le Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, GSLI 132: 361–89. Magalhães, A. (2019) ‘Vittoria Colonna, donna di governo e mecenate al Castello Aragonese d’Ischia’, Studi giraldiani 5: 139–83. ––– (2020) ‘L’immagine della marchesa: Bernardo Tasso e la raffigurazione di Vittoria Colonna nel “Libro secondo degli Amori”’, Studia Aurea 14: 537-78. Mattioda, E. (2016) ‘Le poesie di Vasari e la dedica delle Vite a Vittoria Colonna’, in Horti Hesperidum 6/1: 12–23. Mazzoncini, C. (2017) ‘“Dentro più de l’usato arde e lampeggia”: quattro sonetti commentati di Vittoria Colonna’, Filologia e critica 42/2: 285–301. McHugh, S. (2013) ‘Rethinking Vittoria Colonna: gender and desire in the rime amorose’, The Italianist 33/3: 345–60.

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––– (2020) ‘Devotion, desire, and masculinity in the spiritual verse of Angelo Grillo’, in Innovation: 144–65. Morace, R. (2015) ‘I salmi tra Riforma e Controriforma’, in La Bibbia in poesia. Volgarizzamenti dei Salmi e poesia religiosa in età moderna, ed. R. Alhaique Pettinelli, R. Morace, P. Petteruti Pellegrino and U. Vignuzzi. Rome: 55–81. Moroncini, A. (2017) Michelangelo’s Poetry and Iconography in the Heart of the Reformation. London. Nagel, A. (1997) ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, The Art Bulletin 79/4: 647–68. Núñez Rivera, V. (2011) ‘Por la dignif icación de la poesía religiosa. Deslindes y modelos in un prólogo de Pedro de Enzinas’, in Eros divino: estudios sobre la poesía religiosa iberoamericana del siglo XVII, ed. J. Olivares. Saragossa: 21–48. Østermark-Johansen, L. (1998) Sweetness and Strength: The Reception of Michelangelo in Late Victorian England, 2nd ed. Aldershot. ––– (1999) ‘The matchless beauty of widowhood: Vittoria Colonna’s reputation in nineteenth-century England’, Art History 22/2: 270–94. Phillippy, P. (ed.) (2018) A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing. Cambridge. Prodan, S. R. (2014) Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry, and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge. Quondam, A. (2020) Foreword to Innovation: xi–xxx. Rabitti, G. (1992) ‘Vittoria Colonna, Bembo e Firenze: Un caso di ricezione e qualche postilla’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 127–55. ––– (2000) ‘Vittoria Colonna as role model for Cinquecento women poets’, in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. S. Wood. Cambridge: 478–97. ––– (2006) ‘Vittoria Colonna tra la Francia e la Spagna’, in Il Petrarchismo. Un modello di poesia per l’Europa, vol. 2, ed. F. Calitti and R. Gigliucci. Rome: 481–98. Refini, E. (2007) ‘Le “gioconde favole” e il “numeroso concento”. Alessandro Piccolomini interprete e imitatore di Orazio nei Cento sonetti’, Italique 10: 17–45. Richardson, B. (2020) Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge. Robin, D. (2007) Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chicago. Rublack, U. (2011) ‘Celebrity as concept: an early modern perspective’, Cultural and Social History, 8/3: 399–403. Sanzotta, V. (2010) ‘Per Battista di Montefeltro Malatesti e Giovanni Quirini’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 23: 73–83. Sapegno, M. S. (2003) ‘La costruzione di un Io lirico al femminile nella poesia di Vittoria Colonna’, Versants 46: 15–37. ––– (2016) ‘The Rime: a textual conundrum?’, in Companion: 140–94.

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––– (2018) ‘Oltre Petrarca: Vittoria Colonna da Boccaccio a Dante’, Critica del testo, 21/1: 131–9. Stella, C. (2019) ‘Il ruolo di Vittoria Colonna nelle Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime e virtuosissime donne (1559)’, Italian Studies 74/3: 242–59. Strowe, A. (2018) ‘“A beautiful and living picture”: translation, biography, reception, and feminism in Maria Roscoe’s Vittoria Colonna: Her Life and Poems (1868)’, The Translator 24/2: 183–203. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Teotochi Albrizzi, I. (2009) Vita di Vittoria Colonna, ed. A. Chemello. Pistoia. Thérault, S. (1968) Un cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna châtelaine d’Ischia. Florence and Paris. Toscano, T. R. (2017) ‘Per la datazione del manoscritto dei sonetti di Vittoria Colonna per Michelangelo Buonarroti’, Critica letteraria 45: 211–37 Van Elk, M. (2017) Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic. London. Volta, N. (2018) ‘Vittoria Colonna e gli orientamenti della critica: un bilancio degli ultimi anni (2016–2017)’, Riforma e movimenti religiosi 3: 251–76.

About the author Virginia Cox is Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Early Modern Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (2008), The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy (2011), Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance (2013) and A Short History of the Italian Renaissance (2015).

1.

The D’Avalos-Colonna Literary Circle: A ‘Renewed Parnassus’ Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi

Abstract This study examines the various links between the Neapolitan Accademia Pontaniana and the d’Avalos-Colonna literary gatherings on the island of Ischia, arguing that the former figured as intellectual ancestor of the latter. The two informal groups shared a common geographical context—the bay of Naples—as well as striking similarities between their leading figures, Giovanni Pontano and Vittoria Colonna. This analysis is based mainly on literary sources such as Girolamo Britonio’s Gelosia del Sole and Paolo Giovio’s Dialogus de viris et foeminus aetate nostra florentibus, which make reference to both explicit and subtle connections between the Ischian cenacolo—often referred to in terms of Parnassus—and its inspirational father figure, the original Accademia Pontaniana. Keywords: sodality, salon, humanists, literary circles, Parnassus, intellectual lineage, intellectual genealogy

During the first decades of the sixteenth century—a period of political and religious turmoil in Italy—two women, Costanza d’Avalos, the chatelaine of the castle of Ischia, and her niece by marriage, Vittoria Colonna, hosted literary gatherings on Ischia.1 This cenacolo, or coterie, a rich subject for scholarship, has been studied only partially up until now.2 Scholars have 1 Costanza d’Avalos, who has been described as a ‘typical humanistic princess’ (tipica principessa umanista) (Visceglia 1988: 162), received her education from the grammarian and humanist Giovanni Musefilo. See on her, most recently, Copello 2019c. 2 I use the term cenacolo here to refer to the Ischia gathering to underline its continuities with earlier humanist coteries often referred to by this term. Compare Thérault 1968, who uses cenacolo, and Robin 2007, who uses the term ‘salon’ for the Ischia circle. On these terminological

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch01

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noted its role as an intellectual and spiritual milieu of Colonna and its function as a refuge for intellectuals and poets forced to leave their homes, on account of political or physical threats.3 It has also been emphasized that the d’Avalos-Colonna circle was one of the first examples of a cenacolo run by women.4 It is interesting to note, in this connection, that female scholars dominated twentieth-century work in this area, notably Amalia Giordano (1906) and Suzanne Thérault (1968). Giordano established the division of the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo into four periods:5 the first (1509–12) in which Jacopo Sannazaro, Benedetto Gareth (‘Cariteo’) and a few other poets participated; the second (1517–25), featuring Galeazzo di Tarsia, Girolamo Britonio and Jacopo Campanile (‘Capanio’); the third (1527–28), seeing the participation of Giano Anisio, Paolo Giovio, Marcantonio Minturno and Marcantonio Flaminio; and the last period (1533–36), when Bernardo Tasso, Luigi Tansillo, Angelo di Costanzo and Berardino Rota were members of the circle. Thérault subsequently modified Giordano’s division by amalgamating the first and second periods to a single period from 1509–25, in which Sannazaro was the leading figure. This framework has proven more productive. Although the cenacolo on Ischia has been studied in the past from a variety of angles, it has not been a major focus of recent scholarship on Colonna, which often privileges her later contexts, such as the spiritual and religious milieu of the 1530s and 40s.6 The present study reprises the tradition of scholarship on the Ischia circle by examining the relationship between the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo and another, earlier literary circle that was active starting from the 1470s, across the bay, in Naples—the Accademia Pontaniana. My chief claim here is that there was a close connection between the two cenacoli, based on a double link—a generational link, in which the original Accademia Pontaniana figures as the ‘intellectual ancestor’ of the Ischian literary circle, and a geographical link, connecting the two on the basis of their common geographical context, which determined their character in significant ways. It should be noted that both circles, the Accademia Pontaniana and the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo fall into the category of informal groups, typical issues, see Cox 2016b, 168n116. Magalhães 2019, 176–81 has questioned the appropriateness of the term cenacolo in the Ischia context, speaking rather of a ‘female court’ (corte femminile). 3 Ranieri 2010; Gouwens 2015; Robin 2007. 4 Robin 2007. 5 Giordano 1906: 165. 6 See, for example, the summary in Volta 2018. The main studies since the millennium are Robin 2007 and Castagna 2007. See, however, Magalhães 2019 and 2020 for new work on Colonna’s Ischian context.

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of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While the study of the more formal academies that spread all over Italy later in the sixteenth century is supported by archival documents, including lists of members, written constitutions and written records (atti), research on humanist cenacoli and on what one might call the early academies must be based primarily on literary sources and letters.7

Generational continuities in the Accademia Pontaniana The Accademia Pontaniana was a sodality of intellectuals that flourished towards the end of the fifteenth century.8 Its founder, the humanist Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), was born in the Umbrian town of Cerreto and came to Naples in 1448 under the patronage of the king, Alfonso V of Aragon (who was also Alfonso I of Naples). With the fall of Aragonese rule and the death of Pontano in the first years of the sixteenth century, the Accademia Pontaniana entered a new phase. Although the members of the academy collectively mourned the death of Pontano and much of their activity was infused with a strong sense of nostalgia for the ‘original academy’, a new situation emerged, in which some members were in exile, while others continued their intellectual activities within the Academy, which continued to operate. Meanwhile, members who had been forced into exile were active in setting up or supporting intellectual gatherings in other locations in Southern Italy. Much of the information that we have on these gatherings derives from various types of lists. One thing these demonstrate is the strong vertical links that existed between the original Academy and the post–Pontano Academy within the perception of the accademici themselves—both the original members, who strove for continuity as they looked towards the future, and later members, who sought to connect themselves with the beginning of the chain. One of the humanists at the beginning of the chain, whose lists can serve as a useful introduction to the study of humanists in Naples and Southern Italy, is Antonio de Ferrariis, known as Galateo (1444–1517), several of whose 7 The boundary between informal and formal academies is not as clear as historiography has defined it. I agree with Virginia Cox’s clarification on the informal groups: ‘These did not disappear during the age of the institutionalized academies, but rather survived as an alternative or a supplement, less formal than the academies, more fluid in their membership … Sometimes it is genuinely difficult to ascertain in which category a group should be placed’ (Cox 2016b: 157). 8 See Santoro 1974; Furstenberg-Levi 2016.

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epistles include lists of humanists.9 In a letter forwarded to Crisostomo Colonna in 1498, just after the death of Pontano’s son, Galateo presents various lists that relate to the Accademia Pontaniana. The letter divides members of the Academy into three categories. The first of these categories consists of those ‘among the disciples who preceded Pontano and had waited for him in Elysium—in other words, in Paradise’; these include ‘Ermolao Barbaro, Giorgio Meonio, Ladislaus De Marco, Giovanni and Paolo Attaldi, [Pietro] Compatre and others, who would be lengthy to list’.10 The second ‘are those who followed him, led by fate: the illustrious [Belisario] Acquaviva, Count of Potenza, Sannazaro, [Girolamo] Carbone, [Baldassare] Milano, [Gabriele] Altilio, [Massimo] Corvino, [Giovanni] Pardo, Cariteo, [Giovanni] Cotta, [Francesco] Pucci, Agostino [Nifo], [Pietro] Gravina and [Pietro] Summonte, most loyal, a reader and admirer of Pontano’s books’; Galateo also includes in this category his correspondent, Crisostomo Colonna, ‘and what we might venture to call the members of your new Neapolitan Academy’.11 And Galateo associates himself with a third category, of ‘survivors’ of the original academy (‘and I will add Tristano [Caracciolo], [Enrico] Poderico, Girolamo Ingegno, Sergio [Stiso] and Galateo, who, thanks only to the gods, remain from the old academy’).12 These lists indicate the continuity between a generation of humanists who are not alive anymore, the generation of the older Pontaniani members, whom Galateo belongs to, and a younger generation which his addressee belongs to. The letter implies that future generations will follow. Lists emphasizing this aspect of continuity appeared at various points in the life of the academy. If we skip ahead thirty-five years, to the late stage of the Accademia Pontaniana, which lacks the central figure of Pontano, we find a poem that lists the names of both the older and the newer generations of accademici Pontaniani: the ‘Carmen Nuptiale’ (Wedding Song) written by Giovanni Filocalo in 1533 to celebrate the marriage of the ‘noble and 9 For biographical details, see Romano 1987. In the context of the Accademia Pontaniana, see also ‘Glossary’ in Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 186–7. 10 ‘Praeccesserunt ex auditoribus Pontanum atque illum in campis elysiis, hoc est in paradyso, expectant Hermolaus Barbarus, Georgius Maonius, Ladislaus, Ioannes et Paulus Attaldi, Compatre atque alii, quos longum est enumerare’. Ferrariis 1959: 102. For biographical details of the various accademici listed in this paragraph, see Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 180–94 (Appendix 2). 11 ‘Qui euntibus ordine fatis illum sequentur illustris Aquevivus et comes Potentianus, Sincerus, Carbo, Milanus, Altilius, Corvinus, Pardus, Chariteus, Cotta, Pucius, Augustinus, Gravina et Summontius, candidissimos librorum Pontani censor et cultor, et tu ipse Chrysostome; et si isti vestrae novae neapolitanae Academiae placet’. Ferrariis 1959: 102–3. 12 ‘annumerabo Tristanum, Pudericum, Hieronymum Ingenuum, Sergium et Galateum, qui deorum munere soli ex vetere academia supersumus’. Ferrariis 1959: 103.

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valiant Captain Fabrizio Maramaldo’ of Naples with his ‘rare bride Porzia Cantelmo’.13 At the end of the poem, which deals with love and war, Filocalo confesses that he cannot take on himself this new role as poet without assistance. The author, who represents the new generation of the academy, calls for the return from Elysium of a number of past accademici to help him with his composition: Pontano, Carbone, Pardo, Pucci, Summonte, Elio Marchese, Gravina, Cotta, Compatre, Dionisio and Tommaso Acquosa and Decio Apranio. If it is prohibited for these shades ‘to come down from their blissful seats’ (laetis de regionibus venire), Filocalo invites living poets to approach: Giano Anisio, Girolamo Borgia, Marcantonio Epicuro, Lucio Volpisco, Lodovico Pariseto, Camillo Querno, Benedetto di Falco, Berardino Rota, Bernardino and Coriolano Martirano and Scipione Capece.14 These later-generation poets included several figures who were associated with Vittorio Colonna’s circle on Ischia, such as Anisio, Epicuro, Rota and Capece. The same is true of Filocalo himself.

The d’Avalos-Colonna circle and the Accademia Pontaniana One writer who makes explicit connections between the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo and the ‘original’ Accademia Pontaniana is Girolamo Britonio. In his lyric collection Gelosia del Sole, which he dedicated to Vittoria Colonna and published in Naples in 1519, Britonio alludes not only to a generational link, but also to geographical links between these two circles.15 He urges Pietro Gravina, a central member of the Accademia Pontaniana, to go to Ischia, ‘where the waters are clear’.16 He should tell Colonna that ‘she has made of the mountain a new Parnassus for us’; ‘Your sacred lyre, Apollo, had value while the Aragonese dynasty glowed … O fortunate Pontano, Sannazaro and Albino, Altilio and Cariteo, with those many others who lived singing in that fine age’.17 13 Fabrizio Maramaldo (on whom see Arfaioli 2007) started his military service under Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos, Vittoria Colonna’s husband, and he fought with him at Pavia (1525). On Filocalo’s poem, see Della Rocca 1998: 31–3, 71–7, and Valerio 2018. 14 See the ‘Appendix’ in Della Rocca 1988: 115–16. 15 Britonio’s publisher, Sigismondus Mayr, was also the publisher of the 1505–12 edition of Pontano’s works, edited collectively by the members of the academy after the death of Pontano. See Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 135–141. On Britonio’s relationship with Vittoria Colonna and Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos, and his encomiastic writings on them, see Magalhães 2019: 157–65. 16 ‘Ivi risorgon l’acque chiare’. Britonio 2016: 255 (poem 174). 17 ‘Dirai Vettoria haver converso il monte / un novo a noi Parnaso’; ‘Allor tua sacra lira, Apollo, valse, / mentre rifulse l’Aragonea sterpe … / O felice Pontano, Azzio et Albino, / Altilio e Cariteo

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Britonio recreates the link between Colonna’s circle and the Accademia Pontaniana, represented through a list of central members of the original academy, through various kinds of mediation. One link is the humanist Pietro Gravina, who was rooted deeply in the Accademia Pontaniana, more so than Britonio, and who, at the same time, was involved in a dialogue with Colonna.18 Nature, too, serves as a mediation, through physical elements of a shared landscape, such as water and mountains. These natural elements play a double role, representing the actual place as well as symbolizing a mythical place. This connection with the earlier Pontaniana members runs throughout Britonio’s Gelosia del Sole. For example, we find Britonio addressing three of his sonnets (56, 146 and 332) to Carbone, who was considered one of the heads of the Accademia Pontaniana after Pontano’s death.19 In Britonio’s third sonnet to Carbone, he explains the source of his addressee’s name (which literally means ‘coal’) and connects him to Parnassus and to Ischia. Britonio describes Carbone’s poetic qualities in terms of sparks, rays and pure fire: ‘Carbone, you who, with your beautiful and ardent flames, heat both peaks of Parnassus.’20 Another poem, the canzone ‘Raro, elevato, e glorïoso spirto’ (Rare, lofty and glorious spirit), evokes Pontano and other members of his academy, alongside non-Neapolitan literary luminaries such as Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto: ‘Look at how the name of the noble and great Pontano has remained eternal … / regard the cultured and erudite Sannazaro … / think of Carbone, Bembo, Sadoleto and Alfeo, who, as they write, outstrip in fame the one and the other Orpheus’.21 In these verses, Britonio echoes writings by earlier members of the Pontaniana circle, especially Cariteo, who spent a period of time on Ischia with the d’Avalos-Colonna circle. In Cariteo’s Endimione, for example, we find the

con l’altre schiere / che vissero cantando in sì bel tempo’ Britonio 2016: 255 (poem 174) and 479 (poem 385). 18 An epigram by Gravina compares the widowed Colonna to Portia, Brutus’s wife, a comparison encouraged by Colonna herself. See Gravina 1532: 40rl; Cox 2016a: 498. 19 See Minieri Riccio 1880: 362–3. For the texts, see Britonio 2016: 152, 231, 399–400. 20 ‘Carbon, che con tue f iamme ardenti e belle / scaldi in Parnaso, e l’uno e l’altro monte’. Britonio 2016: 399. 21 ‘Guarda com’è remaso eterno il nome / del gran Pontano gentile … / pon mente al colto e dotto Sannazzaro … / al Carbon, Bembo, Sadoleto, e Alfeo, / come scrivendo ognihora / vincono in pregio e l’uno e l’altro Orfeo’. Britonio 2016: 416 (poem 353). ‘Alfeo’, who is lauded as a poet elsewhere in Britonio’s collection, is difficult to identify; see Britonio 2016: 182.

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following reference to Carbone: ‘Carbone, in whom burning coal scintillates pure fire, ardent virtue’.22 The comparison between the intellectual and poetic activity on the island of Ischia and the image of Mount Parnassus is also found in other writers who spent time on Ischia. In what Amalia Giordano defines as the fourth period of the Ischian cenacolo, Bernardo Tasso and Scipione Capece continued Britonio’s identification of Colonna’s circle with Parnassus. Bernardo Tasso ends his poem to Colonna ‘Illustre Donna, il cui valor inchina’ (Illustrious lady, to whom valour bows) with the words: ‘Happy Ischia, where the Muses have made their Parnassus, their Helicon … ’23 Scipione Capece, in a collection entitled Inarime (the ancient name for Ischia), lauds the hospitality of the island and Colonna’s literary genius and generosity, in a poem addressed to her: ‘Ischia I sing: … You are propitious, you goddesses, who from the caves of Parnassus bring forth pure waters’.24 In addition to these direct references, an additional humanist who was part of the Ischian circle for a period, Paolo Giovio, indirectly associates Parnassus with a similar, but less defined, group of poets. The villa on Lake Como which Giovio converted into a museum of portraits of illustrious men is described by Anton Francesco Doni in two separate letters, after a visit there in the summer of 1543.25 Among the details Doni describes is a fresco in the Villa that portrays ‘steps to Parnassus’ (gradus ad Parnassum), according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. From the summit of Parnassus, a winged Pegasus strikes water from a rock which cascades downward to a fountain around which a multitude of poets crown one other. Ascending the gradus to the summit, according to Doni, are a number of contemporary literati, some with close connections with Colonna, such as Veronica Gambara, Ariosto, Bembo and Giovio. Colonna herself also appears. With these figures, walking one after the other, are also Pontano, Marullo and Sannazaro, three representatives of the Accademia Pontaniana. Here too a connection

22 ‘Carbone in cui scintillan bragie accese / di puro foco, di vertute ardente’. Gareth 1892: 209 (poem 169). 23 ‘Inarime felice; ove le Muse / han fatto il suo Parnaso, il suo Elicona’. Tasso 1995 I.175. On Tasso’s relationship with Vittoria Colonna’s circle on Ischia see Magalhães 2020. 24 ‘Inarime io canto … / Siate propizie voi dee, che dagli antri/ del Parnaso puri liquori fate’. Altamura 1972: 185. 25 See Anton Francesco Doni’s letters to Tintoretto and to Agostino Landi in Barocchi (ed.) 1977, III. 2892–903.

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is made between Parnassus and Colonna’s circle, which is associated with Pontano’s circle.26 The association between Colonna and Parnassus became quite common, beyond the closed circle on Ischia.27 Recent scholars have pointed to the similarity between the depictions of Colonna on portrait medals and the figure of Sappho in Raphael’s painting of Parnassus—the only female poet crowned with laurel.28 Both figures are shown in profile with their bodies facing the viewers. While the reference to Mount Parnassus in Britonio’s Gelosia del Sole is clearly to a mythical image, his image of ‘clear waters’ of Ischia can be interpreted both in allegorical and in physical terms.29 On the one hand, Ischia can be viewed as an island disconnected from the brutal reality of the peninsula and uncontaminated by war. Ischia did indeed serve as a refuge from various catastrophes, such as plague and war, and some participants in its cenacolo were fleeing misfortunes. For Giovio, for example, Ischia was an asylum from the Sack of Rome, as he expressed in various writings. In a letter to Pope Clement VII, he describes Ischia as a sort of Arcadia, a place far from politics and conflict,30 while, in his 1527 Dialogus de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus (Notable Men and Women of Our Time), he speaks of Colonna rescuing ‘those cast out by shipwreck and by the savage waves of a hostile storm’.31 At the same time, Ischia can be viewed in its geocultural context, located on the northern end of the Gulf of Naples. Although the island hosted intellectuals from a variety of places, we can detect a particular dialogue between Ischia’s cenacolo and other local intellectual circles, located on the same ‘clear waters’. Pontano himself, in his collection of joyful erotic poems (Baiae or Hendecasyllables, published in 1505), makes connections 26 On Giovio’s connections with Colonna’s circle on Ischia see Gouwens 2015. 27 Although Colonna herself, in the opening poem of her rime spirituali, famously renounces the quest for ‘Parnassus and Delos’, seen as symbolic of worldly poetry (Cox, ed. 2013: 192). 28 Och 2012: 130; Cox 2016a: 471–2. 29 The term is found in Britonio’s sonnet to Gravina, discussed above, referring most immediately to the image of Ischia as a new Parnassus and Helicon (‘Ivi risorgon l’acque chiare e conte / del bel Cefisso, e la più ascosa vena / del caballino e consacrato fonte’: ‘There the clear and famed waters of the lovely Cephissus have their source, and the more secret vein of the sacred caballine spring’). Britonio 2016: 253 (poem 174)). The references are to the Boetian river Cephissus, which has its source on Mount Parnassus, and the Hippocrene spring on Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses. 30 Robin 2007: 8–13. 31 ‘ut nihil praestantius duceret quam naufragio et saevis adversae tempestatis eiectos fluctibus excipere’. Giovio 2011: 2–3.

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between the water of the bay of Naples and his close circle. In many of these poems, members of his sodality are described bathing in thermal waters of the resort of Baia on the coast not far from Naples, drinking wine and speaking of women and the erotic.32 Giovio, too, speaks of Baia as a place that attracts the Muses ‘no less than Mount Parnassus’.33 Perhaps Britonio’s ‘clear waters’ is intended to suggest that the renewed Academy has now moved to another point in the bay, one that shares the same water with Ischia. Britonio’s perspective reflects his generation’s nostalgia for Naples during the Aragonese period, prior to the Spanish rule, when the Accademia Pontaniana was headed by Pontano himself. Another link between the Accademia Pontaniana and Ischia is Pontano’s villa on Ischia,34 which became a landmark in the memory of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Neapolitan intellectuals. In 1473, while Pontano was on the island of Ischia for an official role, he bought a villa with an orchard, containing a thermal spring. In 1497, he gave the villa to his servant Jacopo Ferrara as a sign of gratitude, with the request that the villa keep his name. We do not know of any fifteenth-century sources that make reference to social gatherings in the grounds of Pontano’s Ischia villa during his lifetime, but later sources seem to allude to them. In a late sixteenth-century scientific work by the Neapolitan ‘philosopher and medic’ Giulio Iasolino, we find various references to Pontano’s villa, including a reference to it as ‘the famous garden with that grand and beautiful cenacolo of the learned and singular Pontano’.35 Iasolino then continues to describe the spring in the garden and its ‘tepid, sweet and clear’ water.36 Iasolino allusion to a cenacolo in this context is intriguing. Although the term may suggest simply a casino for garden dining, it is possible that Iasolino is alluding to specifically literary sociability, perhaps thinking of the gatherings that took place in Ischia, after Pontano’s death, organized by Colonna, in which various accademici Pontaniani participated.

32 See, for example, I.6 and I.10 in Pontano 2006. 33 See Giovio 2013: 242. 34 See Percopo 1938: 107; Iacono 1996: 36, Iacono 2011: 72; Belli 2017. 35 ‘Il famoso giardino con quel si grande, et bellissimo cenacolo del dottissimo e singolar Pontano’. Iasolino 1588: 335. The description of Iasolino’s professions (‘Filosofo, & Medico’) is quoted from the title page of this work. In Iasolino’s time, the garden belonged to Costanza Caracciolo d’Avalos, widow of Alfonso d’Avalos (1541–70), from a collateral branch of the family of Colonna’s husband. 36 ‘L’acqua è alquanto tepida, dolce e chiara’. Iasolino 1588: 335.

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The Accademia Pontaniana and the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo compared Those members of the Accademia Pontaniana who participated in the early period of the d’Avalos-Colonna gatherings must undoubtedly have experienced a sense of continuity. They were accustomed to a similar structure of gatherings in which they read their manuscripts aloud to other humanists, preparing their texts for publication, and they discussed and analyzed both ancient and modern texts.37 We can draw a connecting line, for example, between Pontano’s reading of his Urania at the Accademia Pontaniana and Sannazaro’s reading from his masterpiece, the Arcadia, at the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo.38 Similarly, we might compare the academies’ discussions, as depicted in Pontano’s dialogues, and those of the Ischian circle, with the participation of Colonna, as documented in Giovio’s dialogue. A letter of Giovio’s reports conversations he had with Sannazaro in 1527–8, on Pontano’s work De bello neapolitano, echoing conversations in the original Pontaniana gatherings.39 In addition, Pontano’s continuing, posthumous authority within later generations of the Accademia Pontaniana,40 is also mirrored in the d’AvalosColonna circle, as evidenced by the prominent place that Pontano has in Giovio’s Notable Men and Women. Reference is made to Pontano at various moments during Giovio’s dialogue, for example during discussions of astrology and of eloquence. 41 The dialogue also alludes to Pontano’s intellectual impact in Ischia by recalling his statue there. 42 Nor is Pontano merely mentioned or memorialized in Notable Men and Women; we also find traces of a substantive influence there. For example, an important characteristic of Pontano’s work that seems to be reflected in Giovio’s dialogue, especially into the third book, is the importance he placed upon humour. While Pontano assigns this ideal only to men, in the third book of Giovio’s dialogue, which discusses illustrious women, we see the ideal of facetiae applied to women 37 Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 14–15, 78. 38 Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 78–9; Robin 2007: 4. 39 Giovio 1956: I.77. 40 See Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 130–5. 41 Giovio 2013: 47, 283. For discussion of Pontano’s presence in the dialogue, see Giovio 2011: cvi-cvii. 42 Giovio invokes Pontano’s statue in Ischia as an arbiter of conversational decorum (‘Remember that you are in Ischia and that you speak in the vicinity of Pontano’s statue, which as you see, with a supercilious glance reminds us of the measure of equilibrium that even humorous conversations should have’). Giovio 2011: 244. Giovio’s dialogue is the principal source for this statue: see Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 39–40, 152.

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as well: ‘And since she has ears that are neither gloomy nor severe, she takes pleasure in her own wit and in the jokes of others’. 43 The figure of Costanza d’Avalos appears to fit this description. A late fifteenth-century biography of her reports the humorous sharp answer she gave when asked what she thought of the Neapolitan statesman Diomede Carafa’s magnificas aedes (magnificent palace and collection): ‘I would say, mockingly, that they taste like aspic’ (gelatina sapiunt).44 In the second book of Giovio’s dialogue, which catalogues approximately 150 literati, we find the following paragraph relating to Neapolitan humanists: ‘Of the Neapolitans … Pietro Gravina, an elderly man exceptional for both his elegance and his learning, and Girolamo Carbone, known for his friendship with Pontano, have published some beautiful poems … Girolamo Angeriano, a Lucanian by birth, is celebrated for love poems … There is also Anisio, an exceedingly honourable priest … beside his lyric poems he has composed many satires in pure Horatian style. Antonio Minturno, equally learned in Greek and in Tuscan, excels in epic poetry’. 45 An examination of the names chosen to represent the Accademia Pontaniana shows that Giovio chose to include in this paragraph those accademici Pontaniani who also frequented the Ischian circle, thus creating an identification between the two circles. In addition, other Pontaniana members are referred to in Giovio’s dialogue: for example, Britonio, Rota and Sannazaro, who was considered the most important contemporary poet. They are referred to by the Neapolitan interlocutor Muscettola, who was on Ischia during the period when Giovio wrote the dialogue, in tones of particular familiarity, as ‘our Britonio’, ‘our Rota’, ‘our Sannazaro’, ‘our friend Sannazaro’. 46 One wonders if this ‘our’ refers to Naples or to Ischia. Another important link between the two intellectual circles regards the central role played by the head of each one of them. For these humanistic academies, the head of the academy had a crucial role, as opposed to the later academies who defined their main focus or philosophy through condensation into a motto and an impresa. The Ischian circle can be classified as a humanistic cenacolo, if we take into account the dominant role that Colonna played as its focal point, as well as the informal spirit that characterized it. 43 ‘Et quum neque severas habeat aures, suoque sale et alienis facetiiss delectetur, nullum tamen verbum exit ex ore honorificum’. Giovio 2013, 526–7. In his extending wit also to women, Giovio is probably influenced by Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. 44 De Divitiis 2012. 45 Giovio 2013: 243. 46 Giovio 2013: 271, 233, 470.

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There are, in fact, some interesting similarities between Pontano and Colonna in their function as the leading figure. Both of them are part of a cult of Fame, very developed during the Renaissance. Pontano’s Urania, the poem most admired by his contemporaries, ends with an explicit expression of his desire for fame: Fama ipsa assistens tumulo, cum vestibus aureis, ore ingens, ac voce ingens, ingentibus alis per populos late ingenti mea nomina plausu vulgabit, titulosque feret per secula nostros plaudentesque meis resonabunt laudibus aurae. 47 Fame herself present at my funeral, in golden dress, with her great mouth and her great voice, on her great wings, throughout the nations, far and wide, she will make my name known to great applause, and she will carry my reputation down through the centuries, and the winds will clap their hands, echoing my praises.

Similarly, Colonna, who often refers in her poems to the fame of her husband, won vast national celebrity for herself in spite of her insistent expressions of modesty. 48 Ariosto, in the thirty-seventh canto of his Orlando furioso, dedicates a long passage to her. 49 He first refers to her poetry: ‘This one woman has not only made herself immortal with a style, a sweetness I have never heard bettered’,50 before punning on her name (a much-favoured praise topos among her contemporaries), ‘Victoria is her name—appropriate for one born amid victories, one who wherever she goes, is preceded or followed by Victory’.51 This is only the best-known of countless tributes to Colonna.52

47 Pontano 1505: Urania, V, lines 923–7 (unnumbered). The translation is adpated from Kidwell 1991: 311. 48 For a discussion of Colonna’s fame and exemplarity see Cox 2016a. For her modesty, see, for example, her sonnet ‘Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia’ (I write solely to salve the suffering), analyzed in the chapters by Humberto González Chávez and Anna Wainwright in this volume. 49 For discussion, see Cox 2005a. 50 ‘Quest’una ha non pur sé fatta immortale / col dolce stil di che il meglior non odo’. Ariosto 1964: 1260 (37:16). The English translation is taken from Ariosto 1974: 443. 51 ‘Vittoria è ’l nome; e ben conviensi a nata / fra le vittorie, ed a chi, o vada o stanzi / di trofei sempre e di trionfi ornate / la vittoria abbia seco, o dietro o inanzi’. (37:18). Other examples of puns on Colonna’s name are discussed in Cupperi 2007 and in Veronica Copello’s chapter in this volume. 52 On the many dedications written in honour of Colonna, see Ranieri 1985 and Scala 1990.

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But, most of all, both Pontano and Colonna are praised specifically for their ability to combine excellence as a poet with involvement in political affairs. Giovio elaborates on Colonna’s bravura in the public realm when describing her success in governing Benevento when Pope Clement VII entrusted the city to her: ‘The entire populace deeply moved by the moderation of her highly authoritative and absolutely incorruptible character, gave thanks to the pontiff through ambassadors, because, at the last minute, through this woman—better than any male governor—he had saved the city as it was collapsing’.53 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, in his Dialogi duo de poetis nostrorum temporum (Two Dialogues on the Poets of Our Times), published in 1551, describes Pontano as ‘one of the leading poets … just about equal to all the writers of antiquity’, who, at the same time, ‘was involved in the important affairs of kings and princes … [and] who handled terms and treatises pertaining to both war and peace’.54 The combination of these two aspects—vita activa and vita contemplativa—formed a convincing ideal model of a leader. The function of the head of the academy, thus, was not one of a mere organiser, but one who inspired. Despite the strong connections between the two circles—the Accademia Pontaniana and the d’Avalos-Colonna circle—in which factors such as geographical vicinity and common membership played a significant role, the Ischian literary circle offered a new model that was different from the Accademia Pontaniana. Unlike the Pontaniana, whose entire activity was in Latin, one of the focuses of the d’Avalos-Colonna circle was on writing, reading and discussing literary works written in the vernacular. But the main innovation of the Ischian cenacolo was the feminine profile of the gathering, created by the women who not only hosted and ran gatherings of men, but shaped and moulded the gatherings as well as the literary works that were produced around these gatherings. In addition, we should not forget other models that contributed to shaping the Ischian cenacolo, such as that of Castiglione. Colonna, who was a niece of Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, was presumably familiar with the life of the Urbino court from first-hand experience or report. In addition, she was familiar with Castiglione’s representation of it in his Il libro del Cortigiano (The Book of the Courtier), which she had read in manuscript. Although Colonna’s correspondence with Castiglione is best known for his accusation 53 Giovio 2013: 373; cfr. Magalhães 2019: 146–50. For a broader picture of Vittoria Colonna’s public role see Targoff 2018. 54 Giraldi 2011: 34–5.

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that she circulated the manuscript of the work without his permission, thus effectively forcing him into print publication, an earlier letter of hers gives a vivid, warm, and insightful appreciation of the work.55 Moreover, if we change the direction of our inquiry and investigate not only who were the models of the d’Avalos-Colonna circle, but also who they were models for, we will find a new link that connects the two. Both sodalities were based on meetings in a private home, where the host has a major role.56 The natural continuation of both groups would be the gatherings throughout the sixteenth century that were based in households. As Virginia Cox points out, these were often hosted by women, such as Violante Gambara in Brescia, Margherita Sarrocchi in Rome, Tullia d’Aragona in Florence, and also Veronica Gambara in Bologna, before she was invited to join a formal academy and before founding her own academy.57

Conclusion In this study, various types of relationship between the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo and the Accademia Pontaniana have been proposed and analysed. We have explored relations of continuity and similarity. We have viewed the Ischian gatherings as a post-Pontano Pontaniana phenomenon, and at the same time, we have observed them as two neighbouring models. Yet, a critical eye cannot avoid not seeing the relationship between them as a movement from a male-centred circle to a cenacolo run by women, which would indicate a discontinuity between the two. From the many references made to Colonna by Accademia Pontaniana members, we can infer that, if not for the policy of the male-centred humanist academies, Colonna would have been considered a natural member of this sodality. Our knowledge of the participants in the Accademia Pontaniana’s meetings and of their activity during the first decades of the sixteenth century derives to a great extent from lists of names and descriptions integrated into the literary works which were produced by its members, such as the ‘Carmen Nuptiale’ by Giovanni Filocalo cited at the beginning of this study. Colonna is usually not mentioned in these lists, probably because of the male-centred mentality that the humanist sodalities still had. At this moment of history, women such as Colonna had to be the initiators 55 Musiol 2013: 170. The letter (XVIII) is discussed in Maria Serena Sapegno’s chapter in this volume, at 121–2. 56 On the meeting places of the Accademia Pontaniana, see Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 60–71. 57 See Cox 2016b: 157ff.

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and hostesses of a gathering of this sort in order to be documented as being there.58 We can thus assume that not all participants in an intellectual gathering had the privilege to be mentioned in written sources. This would mean that we can use the humanists’ lists as a basis for positive deduction and learn from them that a certain poet or humanist did participate, but we cannot claim that somebody did not participate just on the basis of his / her not being mentioned in these written sources. Observing this principle, and going beyond the façade of the lists, helps us perceive continuities between the Accademia Pontaniana and the d’Avalos-Colonna cenacolo, as well as between the heads of the two circles, the ‘gran Pontano’59 and ‘gran Colonna sopra la qual s’appoggia il mondo, e il cielo’ (great Colonna [column] on which the world rests, and the heavens).60

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion DBI

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016), ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome.

Primary works Ariosto, L. (1964) Orlando furioso, ed. E. Sanguineti and M. Turchi. Milan. ––– (1974) Orlando Furioso, tr. G. Waldman. Oxford and New York. Barocchi, P. (ed.) (1977) Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento, 3 vols. Milan and Naples. Britonio, G. (2016) Gelosia del Sole, ed. M. Marrocco. Rome. Ferrariis, A. de (‘Galateo’) (1959) Epistole, ed. A. Altamura. Lecce. Gareth, Benedetto (‘Cariteo’) (1892) Le rime, ed. E. Percopo, 2 vols. Naples. Giovio, P. (1956) Lettere, ed. G. G. Ferrero, in Pauli Iovii opera, 10 vols. Rome. ––– (2011) Dialogo sugli uomini e le donne illustri del nostro tempo, ed. F. Minonzio. Turin.

58 The situation changed in the second half of the sixteenth century with the more formal academies (Cox 2016b: 132–40). 59 See above, note 54. Pontano was very often referred to as ‘gran Pontano’ by the Pontaniani members as well as other contemporary and later writers. 60 The phrase comes from the Tempio d’amore (c. 1520) of ‘Capanio’ (Jacopo Campanile). See Freuler 2016: 246.

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––– (2013) Notable Men and Women of our Time, ed. and tr. K. Gouwens. Cambridge, MA. Giraldi, L. G., (2011) Modern Poets, ed. and tr. J. N. Grant. Cambridge, MA. Gravina, P. (1532) Poematum libri. Naples. Iasolino, G. (1588) De’ rimedi naturali che sono nell’isola di Pithecusa, hoggi detta Ischia. Naples. Pontano, G. G. (1505) Opera. Venice. ––– (2006) Baiae, tr. R. G. Dennis. Cambridge, MA. Tasso, B. (1995) Rime, ed. D. Chiodo and V. Martignone, 2 vols. Turin.

Secondary works Altamura, A. (1972) Studi di filologia italiana. Naples. Arfaioli, M. (2007) ‘Maramaldo, Fabrizio’, in DBI 69. Belli, V. (2017) ‘La Torre del Pontano e la sua Villa a Ischia’, La rassegna d’Ischia 2: 42–9. Castagna, R. (2007) Un cenacolo letterario del Rinascimento sul Castello d’Ischia. Ischia. Copello, V. (2019c) ‘Costanza d’Avalos (1460–1541): “letras” e “valor guerrero” alla corte di Ischia’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 131/2: 343–60. Cox, V. (2005a). ‘Women writers and the canon in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France and Italy, ed. P. J. Benson and V. Kirkham. Ann Arbor: 14–31. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–502. ––– (2016b) ‘Members, muses, mascots: women and Italian academies’, in The Italian Academies 1525–1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. J. E. Everson, D. V. Reidy and L. Sampson. Cambridge, UK: 132–69. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Cupperi, W. (2007) ‘Il nome fatale di Vittoria: note su due medaglie della Marchesa di Pescara’, in Lo sguardo archeologico: i normalisti per Paul Zanker, ed. F. De Angelis. Pisa: 239–53. De Divitiis, B. (2012) ‘Antiquities as gelatine: the palace of Diomede Carafa in the eyes of Costanza d’Avalos’, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. M. Israel and L. A. Waldman. Florence: 412–21. Della Rocca, A. (1988) L’Umanesimo napoletano del primo Cinquecento e il poeta Giovanni Filocalo. Naples. Freuler, G. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna: the pictorial evidence’, in Companion: 237–69. Furstenberg-Levi, S. (2016) The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network. Leiden. Giordano, A. (1906) La dimora di Vittoria Colonna a Napoli. Naples.

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Gouwens, K. (2015) ‘Female virtue and the embodiment of beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’s Notable Men and Women’, Renaissance Quarterly 68/1: 33–97. Iacono, A. (1996) La guerra d’Ischia nel De bello Neapolitano di Giovanni Pontano. Naples. ––– (2011) ‘Gli umanisti e le acque di Ischia’, in Memorie dell’acqua e della terra, ed. R. Valenti. Naples: 63–77. Kidwell, C. (1991) Pontano: Poet & Prime Minister. London. Magalhães, A. (2019) ‘Vittoria Colonna, donna di governo e mecenate al Castello Aragonese d’Ischia’, Studi giraldiani 5: 139–83. ––– (2020) ‘L’immagine della marchesa: Bernardo Tasso e la raffigurazione di Vittoria Colonna nel “Libro secondo degli Amori”’, Studia Aurea 14: 537-78. Minieri Riccio, C. (1880) ‘Cenno storico delle Accademie fiorite nella città di Napoli’, Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 5: 353–65. Musiol, M. (2013) Vittoria Colonna: A Woman’s Renaissance. Berlin. Och, M. (2012) ‘Vittoria Colonna in Giorgio Vasari’s life of Properzia de’ Rossi’, in Wives, Widows, Mistresses and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible Through Art and Patronage, ed. K. A. Mclver. Farnham: 119–37. Percopo, E. (1938) Vita di Giovanni Pontano, ed. M. Manfredi. Naples. Ranieri, C. (1985). ‘Vittoria Colonna: dediche, libri, e manoscritti’, Critica letteraria 47: 249–70. ––– (2010) ‘Vittoria Colonna e il cenacolo ischitano’, in La donna nel Rinascimento meridionale, ed. M. Santoro. Pisa and Rome: 49–65. Robin, D. (2007) Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses and the Counter Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chicago. Romano, A. (1987), ‘De Ferrariis, Antonio’, in DBI 33. Santoro, M. (1974) ‘La cultura umanistica nell’età aragonese’, in Storia di Napoli, vol. IV. Naples: 315–498. Scala, M. (1990) ‘Encomi e dediche nelle prime relazioni culturali di Vittoria Colonna’, Periodico della Società Storica Comense 54: 95–112. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Thérault, S. (1968) Un cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna châtelaine d’Ischia. Florence and Paris. Valerio, S. (2018) ‘Guerra, amore e poesia nell’epitalamio di Giovanni Tommaso Filocalo per Fabrizio Maramaldo e Porzia Cantelmo’, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Vindobonensis, ed. F. Romer and A. Steiner-Weber. Leiden: 743–53. Visceglia, M. A. (1988) Il bisogno di eternità: i comportamenti aristocratici a Napoli in età moderna. Naples. Volta, N. (2018) ‘Vittoria Colonna e gli orientamenti della critica: un bilancio degli ultimi anni (2016–2017)’, Riforma e movimenti religiosi 3: 251–76.

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About the author Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi has lived in Florence since 1996. Her scholarship has focused on Naples’s intellectual milieu. Her book, The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network, was published by Brill in 2016; various recent articles have elaborated on the intellectual role of the postPontaniana intellectuals.

2.

Late Love: Vittoria Colonna and Reginald Pole Ramie Targoff

Abstract In the final years of her life, Vittoria Colonna developed a profound attachment to the English Catholic cardinal, Reginald Pole, who had formed a circle of reformers in the city of Viterbo where Colonna herself moved in 1541. This paper examines the epistolary exchange between Colonna and Pole with an aim of uncovering the nature of what Colonna repeatedly describes as her ‘extreme obligation’. The letters Colonna wrote both to Pole directly and to others in the Viterbo group about Pole reveal his role in her life as a Christ-like figure to whom she is both erotically and spiritually drawn. Keywords: Reformation, Viterbo, spirituali, Renaissance friendship, Inquisition

In the spring of 1541, after roughly two months of intense fighting in the conflict that came to be known as the Salt Wars, Vittoria Colonna’s brother Ascanio Colonna surrendered to the pope.1 Despite fervent pleas from the Emperor Charles V to spare a few of the Colonnas’ feudal lands, Paul III razed the fortifications of Marino, Rocca di Papa, and Paliano to the ground. Ascanio was declared an enemy of the Papal States and went into exile in the kingdom of Naples, while Vittoria, who had taken refuge in Orvieto, returned to Rome to the familiar convent of San Silvestro in Capite. Of her response to the family’s ruin, two mentions have survived. The first comes second-hand in a letter from the governor of Orvieto, Brunamonte de Rossi, 1 A longer version of this essay, with citations solely in English, was published in Targoff 2018: 227–51. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch02

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to the pope’s grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. ‘Great satisfaction’, de Rossi wrote, ‘is universally felt at the taking of Paliano, which I immediately made known and published everywhere … Nor did I fail to report the news to the Signora Marchesa, who replied: “Possessions come and go, so long as people are safe”’.2 The second we find in a letter Colonna wrote to her friend Ercole II d’Este, duke of Ferrara. ‘Your excellence should know’, she began, ‘that I am most consoled in my distress, and I thank God that with the loss of worldly goods, fortune has given me the occasion to acquire goods of the spirit’.3 It was precisely in the aftermath of these worldly losses, and their reinforcement of her already fierce commitment to the ‘goods of the spirit’ (beni del animo), that Colonna made the decision to move to Viterbo, where a community of reformers was gathering around the newly appointed papal legate, or governor, Reginald Pole. My focus in this essay will be on Colonna’s relationship to Pole, which has been strikingly under-examined in favour of her far more celebrated—and in many ways less complex—relationship to Michelangelo. This is, in the broadest sense, a biographical essay, meant to explore the nature of Colonna’s attachment to the English cardinal and its role in guiding her from what she described as a state of spiritual unrest to one of peace. But a secondary purpose, and one whose ramifications extend beyond the particular context of Pole, is to make a case for Colonna’s letters as a literary resource. Out of print since the late 1880s and used almost exclusively for biographical evidence, Colonna’s letters have been overlooked as a textual corpus rich in metaphor, affect, and expressive power. In the letters to Pole that I will examine, Colonna’s voice is strikingly different from what we find in most of her poems; she expressed fears, desires, and fantasies that were perhaps less compatible with, or kept in check by, the fourteen-line sonnet. There is much, therefore, to be learned about Colonna’s sensibility both as a person and as an author in the letters that were her most abiding, constant form of writing. Colonna met Pole around the time of his appointment to the papal curia in 1536. Paul III supposedly consulted with her about his choice of new 2 ‘De la presa di Palliano, qual subito feci a sapere e divulgare per tutto, se ne è presa universalmente gran consolatione … nè manchai farne anchor parte a la S.ra Marchesa, qual resposi: la robba va e viene, purchè sian salve le persone’. Cited in Tordi 1895: 522. The English translation is from Jerrold 1906: 233, with my small emendations. 3 ‘[L]a Ex.tia Vostra sappia che sto in questi travagli consolatissima, et rengratio Dio che con perder li beni della fortuna me dia occasion de acquistar quelli del animo’. Colonna 1892: 229–30 (Letter CXXXVIII, from Orvieto, 28 May 1541). All translations from Colonna’s correspondence are mine unless otherwise noted.

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cardinals, although evidence of their f irst meeting has not survived. 4 Whenever it was that she came to know Pole personally, he impressed her as a deeply spiritual being. In a letter to Marguerite de Navarre written in February 1540, Colonna described the lofty conversations she and Pole had together, and declared that he was ‘always in the heavens, and only for the needs of others does he look to and bother with the earth’.5 This account of Pole does not entirely square with a life spent manoeuvring between factions in England and Italy, and surviving plot after plot against him (Pole’s biography is far too complicated to summarize adequately, but after refusing to support Henry VIII’s divorce, he had fled to Padua, and soon became a powerful figure in the Roman church).6 The complex politics that characterized his life were obviously not apparent, or not of interest, to Colonna. Whatever their prior history had been, the relationship between Colonna and Pole greatly intensified in the summer of 1541, when Pole made an extraordinary gesture: he asked Colonna, who was ten years his senior, to be his new mother. Pole’s real mother, Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, had met a horrific end earlier that spring at the hands of Henry VIII.7 Largely in retaliation for the acts of her sons—not only Reginald, but also his two brothers who were working from within England to depose the king—she was beheaded in May outside the Tower of London. When the news of Margaret’s death reached Pole, he was hiding away in the remote town of Capranica in the north of Lazio. According to his secretary and first biographer, Ludovico Beccadelli, Pole reacted to the news by withdrawing into his oratory for an hour, and then emerged in good humour, declaring that he was now the son of a martyr.8 A few months later, Pole approached Colonna to take Margaret’s place. This was first proposed in response to a letter Colonna sent him in August 1541, which has not survived: Et sane decet Excellentiam tuam ita facere, quam cum semper sum veneratus, postquam Dei in eadem summa virtutum dona cognovi, tum postremo cum Pharaonis furor mihi matrem eripuisset, quae me genuit, in matris loco ipsam suscepi, non talem, qualem Moyses, cuius postea negavit se esse filium, cum illa esset filia Pharaonis, sed qualem, si nunc 4 For details on when Colonna and Pole may have met, see Forcellino 2016: 280–2. 5 ‘[La cui conversazione] è sempre in cielo, et solo per l’altrui utilità riguarda, et cura la terra’. Colonna 1892: 187 (Letter CXII, from Rome, 15 February 1540). 6 For Pole’s biography, see Mayer 2000. 7 For details of Margaret Pole’s death, see Pierce 2003: 177. 8 Mayer 2000: 112.

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mei protectionem suscipiatis, semper quidem sum praedicaturus, qui non minus destitutus videor, quam tum Moyses, cum infans esset, expositus non solum periculis fluminis, ut ille, sed terrae marisque, et … a filia magni regis suscipiar, et eius Regis, qui Pharaonem et exercitum eius proiecit in mare.9 It is fitting that your Excellence do so, You whom I have always revered after recognizing in your virtues the highest gifts of God, and especially now, since Pharaoh’s madness has ripped away from me my own mother, I accept you in her place, not like the woman whose son Moses later denied being, although she was the daughter of the Pharaoh, but like the woman whom, if you should undertake to care for me, I will surely always be praising—I who seem no less deserted than Moses as an infant, exposed not only to the dangers of the river as he was, but also to those of the land and sea … I who will be received by the daughter of a great king, the same who cast Pharaoh and his army into the sea.

In this unusual use of the biblical story, Pole casts himself as Moses, the abandoned infant, desperately in need of maternal care, while imagining Colonna not as the maternal surrogate, Pharaoh’s daughter, but as the equivalent of Moses’s actual mother, Jochebed, who pretended to be a nursemaid in order to suckle her son. Pole’s idea of casting Colonna as his new mother was not a passing fancy that arose in the immediate aftermath of his loss. In a letter several months later to Antonio Pucci, the governor of Bagnoregio, he referred to Colonna’s role as if it were official: ‘I cannot omit’, he concluded, ‘that the Marchesa of Pescara, my new mother, whom I saw recently at Bagnoregio, has been well served by relatives of your Lord and guests in your name’.10 Word of the new arrangement between Colonna and Pole, meanwhile, circulated among their mutual friends. In a letter sent to Colonna in the fall of 1541, Bembo referred to Pole as vostro figliuolo, ‘your son’.11 At first Colonna embraced the idea of assuming a maternal relationship to Pole. There was, of course, a real poignancy to this: as a childless woman, she seems to have welcomed the opportunity to occupy the role of mother,

9 Colonna 1892: 234–5 (Letter CXXXIX, around summer of 1541); translation by Troy Tower. The last phrase is an echo of Exodus 15.4. 10 Pole 1744–57: 3:114 (no. 44). 11 Colonna 1892 (Letter CXLI, from Venice, 18 November 1541): 237.

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however artificial the relationship might be.12 We see her trying out the part, as it were, in her only letter to Pole from the summer of 1541 that has survived. She began by apologizing for bothering him with her frascarie, or ‘worthless ramblings’ (literally, ‘twigs’) and then begged him to accept what she, as his mother, could give him: ‘Although Your Lordship is truly wont to say, in the words of Saint Paul, that it is better to give than to receive, allow me this blessedness, and allow yourself to be deprived of the desire to be more blessed than your mother, given that Saint Paul says it is the parents who should give to their children, not the children to parents’.13 No sooner, however, did she declare her desire to be the generous one—to give rather than receive—than she asked him to acknowledge her great indebtedness to him. ‘And believe’, she continued, ‘that I am extremely obligated to you, both for spiritual things and for worldly things, which in my great need and exile, you of all people have given to me, and consoled me, and helped me, and accommodated me, and I kiss your hands’.14 This mention of ‘exile’ is one of Colonna’s only acknowledgements of the suffering she endured in the aftermath of the previous spring’s losses—it is the only occasion, in fact, where we glimpse her regarding the family properties as her true home, and the convent as a temporary dwelling. Perhaps she felt that Pole, himself in exile from England, understood what it felt like to be unmoored in this way. But even more important than the idea of exile in this letter is her expression of feeling ‘extremely obligated’ (extremamente obligata). With this phrase, the pretence of her being in loco parentis in relation to Pole fell away. However much she wanted to be Pole’s mother, she inevitably ended up as his child. As she candidly put it in a 1546 letter to their mutual friend, Bishop Giovanni Morone, one of the central members of the group in Viterbo that came to be known as the Ecclesia Viterbiensis: ‘I confess to your Lordship that I was never so obliged to anyone as I am to Pole’.15 12 In very different contexts, Colonna played a similar role with her husband’s orphaned cousins, Alfonso and Costanza d’Avalos. 13 ‘[S]e ben con San Paulo V. S. suol dire che è più beata cosa el dare che ’l recevere, contentise dare ad me questa beatitudine et privarsene sua S.ria desiderando esser mancho beato per la matre maxime che ’l medesmo San Paulo dice che devono i parenti donare a’ figli, non li figli a’ parenti’. This letter is reprinted in Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 95. 14 ‘[E]t creda che li sono extremamente obligata, et delle cose spirituali et delle temporali, che in questa mia necessità et exilio sopra tutte le persone me ha consolata, aiutata, soccorsa et accomodata, et li baso le mano’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 95. 15 ‘[I]o confesso a Vostra Signoria che mai a persona fui più oblicata che a lui’. Colonna 1892: 313 (Letter CLXXV, from Rome, 30 November 1546).

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What did Colonna mean by this sense of obligation? One of the earliest and most revealing explanations came in a letter she sent in the fall of 1541 to Giulia Gonzaga, the disciple of the reformer Juan de Valdés and the widow of Colonna’s cousin Vespasiano Colonna. There, she wrote that she owed to Pole ‘the health of both my soul and my body, whereby the one for superstition, the other for bad governance, were in danger’.16 According to Pietro Carnesecchi, another member of the reformed circle at Viterbo, who testified about Colonna before the inquisitorial courts in Rome some twenty years later, and was asked specifically about her letter to Giulia Gonzaga: La signora marchesa avanti che pigliasse l’amicitia del cardinale si affligeva talmente con degiuni, cilicii et altre sorte di mortificationi della carne che si era redotta ad havere quasi la pelle in su l’osso: et ciò faceva forse con ponere troppa confidentia in simili opere, imaginandosi che in esse consistesse la vera pietà et religione, et per consequente la salute dell’anima sua.17 Before the signora Marchesa contracted her friendship with the Cardinal, she used to afflict herself so much with fasts, sackcloth, and other mortifications of the flesh that she had reduced herself to skin and bone, and this she did, perhaps, because she placed too much confidence in such works, imagining that true piety and religion, and consequently the salvation of one’s soul, consisted in these things.

Fasts, sackcloth, mortifications of the flesh: these were practices that Paolo Giovio had already described Colonna’s partaking in with too much enthusiasm in 1527 on Ischia.18 It is possible she had never given these practices up; it is also possible that she resumed her strict bodily penitence in times of turmoil or sadness. Carnesecchi explained that Colonna had come to change her ways while she was in Viterbo, thanks to Pole’s intervention: ‘But after being advised by the Cardinal that she rather offended God than otherwise by treating her body with such austerity and rigour … the aforesaid Signora began to desist from that austere mode of life, reducing her mortifications little by 16 ‘[I]o che sono a Sua Signoria reverendissima della salute dell’anima e di quella del corpo obbligata, chè l’una per superstitione, l’altra per mal governo era in periculo’. Colonna 1892: 239 (Letter CXLII, from Viterbo, 8 December 1541). 17 Firpo and Marcatto (eds.) 1998–2000: 2.3: 1034. Translated in Jerrold 1906: 276. 18 See Giovio 2013: 525.

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little to a just and reasonable mean’.19 What Carnesecchi described with detachment in his testimony in the 1560s came to life in Colonna’s own writing. In a letter to Morone written in December of 1542 or 1543 (she omitted the year), Colonna exclaims: [O]gni parola di Mons.r mio è, non dico legge, che riduca lo spirito in servitù, ma regula infalibile, che libera mi fa andare alla dritta via: … se in questa materia verissima, ch’è a me tanto cara, avessi potuto allargarmi, Vostra Magnificenza avria visto il caos d’ignorantia, ove io era, et il labirinto di errori, ov’io passeggiava sicura, vestita di quell’oro di luce, che stride senza star saldo al paragone della fede.20 Every word of my Monsignor [Pole] is—I won’t say the law that reduces the spirit into servitude, but an infallible rule, which liberates me to go along the straight path … If on this truest subject, which is so dear to me, I could have expounded, Your Magnificence would have seen the chaos of ignorance in which I used to dwell, and the labyrinth of errors where I used to walk in safety, in which I believed that I walked safely, dressed in that gold of light that flashes without holding up to the comparison of true faith.

Before knowing Pole, Colonna declares, she lived in a state of chaos, she walked in a labyrinth of errors, she was bathed in a false aura of gold. ‘My body’, she continued, was ‘continually moving to find inner tranquillity, and my mind in constant agitation trying to find peace. And God willed that [Pole] address me, saying Fiat lux [Let there be light], which showed me that I was nothing and that in Christ I would find everything’.21 This is, in effect, a salvation narrative—Colonna was lost, and then found, with Pole in the role of saviour. Colonna’s certainty about the spiritual nature of her ties to Pole made her entirely insensitive to, and defensive about, a romantic or erotic interpretation of her attachment. Pole’s companion Alvise Priuli, however, saw it 19 ‘Ma poi che fu admonita dal cardinale ch’ella più tosto offendeva Dio che altrimenti con usare tanta austerità et rigore contra il suo corpo … la sudetta signora comminciò a retirarsi da quella vita così austera, reducendose a poco a poco a una mediocrità ragionevole et honesta’. Firpo and Marcatto (eds.) 1998–2000: 2.3: 1034. Translated in Jerrold 1906: 276–7. 20 Colonna 1892: 272–3 (Letter CLXI, from Viterbo, 22 December 1542 or 1543). 21 ‘[E]ssendo continuo col corpo in moto per trovar quiete e con la mente in agitatione per haver pace. E Dio volse che da sua parte mi dicesse: fiat lux, che mi mostrasse esser io niente e in Christo trovare ogni cosa’. Colonna 1892: 273.

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otherwise, and was clearly irritated if not threatened by Colonna’s attention to his friend (or most certainly, his lover). In a letter Colonna sent to Priuli in the spring of 1543, she defended herself against his accusation that she was too physically drawn to Pole: della mia carne tanto chiara che voi tutti dicete, ciò è della troppa affettion, che ho a tal spirito de Dio, che secondo voi può essere tentatione: unusquisque tentatur concupiscentia sua. Mai ho havuta pratica che me dicano che sia bon segno, nè che mai me ne dicessero una parola consolatoria, anzi vanno trovando ogni modo in ciò de sconsolatione, di modo che ringratio infinitamente il nostro reverendissimo monsignor che, così scrivendo ad altri, ha fatto intendere a me che non è errore, per che se fussi errore e tentatione, la sua charità mai se saria tenuta de dirme che era bon segno.22 As concerns my too famous flesh that you all speak about, that is, that I have too much affection for such a spirit of God, which according to you can be a temptation: ‘But every man is tempted by his own lust’ (KJV James 1:14). I have never experienced people saying that it is a sign of good nor have people ever said a consolatory word—in fact they manage to find every way of disparaging this, such that I now endlessly thank our most reverend monsignor who, in writing about this to others, has made me understand that it is not an error, for if it were error and temptation, his compassion would never have permitted him to declare it a sign of good.

With Pole, she concluded, ‘the matter is so perfect, my affection so just and pleasing to God … that I rather practise my faith by receiving from God all that he does’.23 How exactly Pole produced such strong feelings in Colonna remains something of a mystery. He was neither a powerful preacher like Ochino, nor a brilliant artist like Michelangelo; there were no sermons or paintings to move her. But Colonna seemed to crave the company of Pole more than anyone she had ever known (with the possible exception of Ferrante when she was a young bride).24 In July 1543, a month or two after she defended 22 Colonna 1892: 275–6 (Letter CLXIII). I have dated Colonna’s letter according to the chronology given in Thomas Mayer’s edition of Reginald Pole’s letters (Pole 2002: 310), which includes a summary of this letter. The translation is by Troy Tower. 23 ‘[La] cosa è sì perfetta, l’affection mia sì giusta … sì cara et grata a Dio … exercito più la fede recevendo absolutamente da Dio quanto lui fa’. Colonna 1892: 276. 24 On this period in Colonna’s life, see Targoff 2018: 25–43.

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herself to Priuli, she wrote Pole a long letter in which she tried to explain her devotion to him: [S]a il Signor Nostro che per altro non desidero excessivamente di parlar con V. S., se non perchè vedo in lui [lei, cioè Polo] un ordine di spirito, che solo lo spirito lo sente, e sempre mi tira in su a quell’amplitudine di luce, che non mi lassa troppo fermare nella miseria propria, anzi con … alti substanziosi concepti mi mostra la grandezza di lassù e la bassezza e nihilità nostra.25 The Lord knows that I don’t desire excessively to speak with you but for the fact that I perceive in you 26 an order of spirit, which only the spirit senses, and which pulls me up to that fullness of light [so] that it does not let me wallow too long in my own misery, but rather with … high and substantial ideas [it] shows me the greatness up there and this baseness and lowness here below.

It is not clear whether Pole himself may have questioned her desire to speak with him, or whether she was still responding to Priuli’s accusations: [Q]uanto io per gratia sua caminassi presto verso lui, tanto più ho di bisogno di parlare alla Vostra Signoria, non per anxia, nè dubbi, nè molestia, che abbia, nè tema d’havere per bontà di colui, che ne assecura, ma perchè ogni volta che la Vostra Signoria parli di quel stupendissimo sacrificio della eterna destinatione, dell’ essere preamati e di quel viene ascondito trovato su quelli monti, porti et fonte … fa star l’anima sull’ali, sicura di volar al desiderato nido.27 The closer I, through His grace, walk toward Him, the more I need to speak to you, not out of anxiety or doubts or any worries I might have or fear to have through the goodness of Him who assures these things, but because every time Your Lordship speaks of that stupendous sacrifice of eternal election, of being rewarded and of what was hidden being found on those mountains, harbours, and springs … [it] makes my soul soar with its wings, sure that it is flying to the desired nest. 25 Colonna 1892: 263–4 (Letter CLIV, from Viterbo, 15 July 1543). 26 I have emended the Italian text, which reads ‘lui’, with ‘lei’, as Colonna is clearly addressing Pole, and not God. The mistake was most likely an error of transcription. 27 Colonna 1892: 264.

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There are occasions in Colonna’s spiritual poetry when she adopts a mystical tone. But it is very rare to find anything like this description of her spirit soaring, her recognition of the smallness of this world compared to the heavens, her perception of the brilliant radiance surrounding the divine. At the end of the letter, she declared: ‘For me, speaking with you is like speaking with an intimate friend of my groom [Christ], who readies me through this medium, and calls me to him and wills that I engage in discussions to spark and console me’.28 Colonna may have stared at Michelangelo’s drawings of Christ for hours at a time. But at least as she describes it here, the closest she came to experiencing Christ’s presence on earth was when she found herself in the company of Pole. At some point in the following year, in early 1544, Colonna sent Pole another letter, in part in response to concerns she had about Priuli, whom she began the letter by complaining about—Priuli, she claimed, had actually chased her away from seeing Pole in person. ‘It seemed to him’, she bitterly remarked, ‘to take a thousand years before he could get me to leave, so he could stay there [with you] without the bother of a woman’s visits’.29 She reassured herself, however, that her ties to Pole could never be severed by mere physical distance. ‘I find in every way that this is the greatest truth’, she affirmed, ‘what you have written to me: namely, that we don’t need to have our own place in this life, and in this regard I thank God, who saw fit to use Your Most Reverend Lordship to set me the happiest place, reached through my faith, at your right hand, like a shoot of that true vine, which there alone is sweet smelling and dear’.30 Colonna’s ‘we’ is ambiguous—non dovemo haver loco proprio nostro in questa vita—and Pole’s letter to which she is responding has not survived, but she could be speaking on behalf of women, who are not assigned a place in the world in the same way as men, or to humans more generally, whose life on this earth is inevitably temporary. Whoever she included in her ‘we’, the inquisitor who read Colonna’s letters and commented on them several decades later concluded that this particular sentiment smacked of heresy. ‘It may be true that we don’t have a permanent 28 ‘[T]anto è a me parlare con Vostra Signoria come con un intimo amico del sposo, che mi prepara per questo mezzo, et mi chiama a lui et vol che ne ragioni per accendermi e consolarmi’. Colonna 1892: 264. 29 ‘[P]arve mill’anni de cacciarme de llà, per starve poi senza impaccio de visite di donna’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 98. 30 ‘[T]rovo in tuti li modi per me maxime veris[si]mo questo: che V. S. R.ma scrive cioè che non dovemo haver loco proprio nostro in questa vita, et così ne rengratio Dio il qual ha voluto per mezzo di V. S. R.ma stabilirme per fede felicissimo loco alla destra sua come palmite di quella vera vite, che solo liìè odorifera et cara’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 98.

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citizenship in this world, nonetheless not to have a place of our own belongs only to the religiosi. Therefore’, he declares, Colonna seems to err, adopting the doctrine of the Waldesians (the early twelfth-century reformers, founded by Peter Waldo in Lyon).31 The inquisitor also found fault with her assertion of being placed by God at Pole’s side, ‘like a shoot of that true vine’ (come palmite di quella vera vite—a reference to John 15, where Christ is referred to as the ‘true vine’). ‘It seems’, the inquisitor concludes, ‘that here Colonna affirms the certainty of her own grace’.32 Whatever its heretical content, for Colonna the metaphor of the shoot of the vine—an image of her emerging out of, or being grafted onto, Pole—is meant to convey how unnatural a division Priuli proposes, and how contrary to the will of God. What is missing for her, however, is Pole’s own consent to her dependence, his willingness to adopt Colonna, in effect, as his child (hence reversing her role as his mother): ‘If I could truly feel’, she continues, ‘that your only delight is to provide me with justice and wisdom and sanctification and redemption, I would not only be consoled in my wandering, even if the journey were full of thorns, but I would also have such a guarantee of the joy awaiting me at the port, so that I would feel as if I were already there in terms of the peace [I feel], even if I were still on the journey only in terms of hope’.33 The verb she used for ‘wandering’ is peregrinare: she imagines herself as a spiritual pilgrim, who needs assurance that Pole will be waiting at the promised end. For this reason, the letter concludes, she cannot abide their separation: ‘since I cannot smell from far away the sweet smell of Christ borne in Your Most Reverend Lordship’s voice, even if the mind has quieted the anxiety of its outer ills, my desires have grown through the nearer hope for my inner wellness’.34 The odd synaesthesia of imagining the smell, or scent, of Pole’s voice speaks to the all-encompassing nature of her longing for proximity, a longing that ultimately lies in her desire for her own wellbeing. 31 ‘licet non habeamus hic civitatem permanentem, tamen non habere locum proprium est tantum religiosorum, ideo videtur declinare ad pauperes de Lugduno’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 147. The English translation is by Troy Tower. 32 ‘videatur asserere confirmationem et certitudiem gratiae’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 147. 33 ‘[S]e veram[en]te sentissi che quel unico suo dilecto è fatto a me giustitia, sapientia, santificatio et redemptio, non solo serria consolata nel mio peregrinare, etiam che dintorno fussino tutte spine, ma haveria tanto grande arra del gaudio del porto, che mi pareria di esser in quello per la pace, se ben sono in camino per la speranza’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 98–9. 34 ‘[P]erché quello odor di Christo che porta V. S. R.ma nella sua viva voce non si po’ sentir da lontano, se ben è quieta la mente circa l’ansia del suo mal exteriore, il desiderio è cresciuto per la speme più propinqua del mio bene interiore’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 99.

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For someone whose language was consistently decorous and restrained, this letter stands out as exceptional. That Colonna’s feelings for Pole far overwhelmed anything he had imagined when he asked her to be his mother becomes palpably clear. She sent him lengthy letters, while he answered with short replies. ‘Two letters I’ve had from you’, she wrote in August 1543, adopting the tone of a jilted lover, ‘which I must say was miraculous, more so to someone who did not know how brief they are, and that they are responses to many [letters] of mine’.35 In letters to Morone, who had accompanied Pole to Trent when the council there was first convened, Colonna complained about her loneliness in Viterbo, confiding that she felt ‘alone, cold, and unwell’ (io sola fredda et inferma). Her only comfort, she said, came from ‘the certainty that [you and Pole] pray to God for me’.36 There are two letters written to Pole in the last year or so of Colonna’s life that have survived, and that reveal that even when she felt most confident about her spiritual health, her dependence on Pole did not abate. The first was written at Christmas, 1545. By this time, she had moved from Viterbo back to Rome and seemed largely at peace. ‘I desire nothing in this world that has to do with this world’, she declared to him, ‘and I lack nothing in my assurance of enjoying the world to come’.37 (This was, needless to say, another sentence the inquisitor singled out for her Lutheran confidence in her own salvation). Even in affirming her satisfaction in her mortal life and her certainty about the life to come, she confesses nonetheless to her continued longing for Pole: ‘I miss only your Reverence, and desire only you’ (Solo Vostra Reverendissima mi manca, sola lei desidero). This combination of lack and desire is immediately put in the context of Pole’s role as her spiritual guide: ‘I miss only your Reverence, I desire only you, because you continually helped me (more than I could ever do myself) to know myself, to humble myself, to reduce myself to nothing and live only in he who is our every good, consolation, joy and happiness’.38 35 ‘Doi lettere di V. S. R.ma ho haute, il che par un miraculo a dire, maxime a chi non sapessi la brevità di esse, et come sono resposta de molte mie’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 96. 36 ‘[V]ivo consolata dalla certezza che pregano il Signor Nostro’. Colonna 1892 (Letter CLII, 20 May 1543): 261. 37 ‘[S]ì che niente desidero in questo mondo considerando il mondo, et niente mi manca per sicurtà di goder quell’altro, considerando Christo’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 100. 38 ‘Solo V. S. R.ma mi manca, solo lei desidero, perché continuo (più che mai potessi far creatura) mi aiutava a cognoscere me stessa, a humiliarmi, a starmi quasi constretta andar per questa via de annichilarmi et vedermi niente, et viver tutta in colui che è ogni bene, ogni consolatione, gaudio et felicità nostra’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 100.

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But the framing of her need and love in terms of her religious life by no means reduces the intensity of her longing—this is a sacred, but no less profound love. In the second of these letters, written six months later, in July 1546, she affirmed both her state of consolation and her continued dependence on Pole—the one did not by any means cancel out the other: ‘now I go to Christ entirely sure and entirely consoled and I seem to see Your Most Reverent Lordship with that divine goodness entirely one with your most upright will and that my perhaps excessive willingness needed you’.39 That Pole recognized the extravagant nature of Colonna’s love, and his own lack of reciprocal feelings towards her, surfaces very clearly in the last letter he wrote to her, or at least the last that has survived. Dated 4 October 1546 and addressed to ‘the Most Illustrious Lady and the most honoured mother’, the letter reads like an apology—and perhaps also a justification—for the ways he had failed her. Pole begins by recounting a conversation he had recently at Bembo’s house in Padua, where he had received a visit from an English friend, George Lily. Lily had come from Rome where he had seen Colonna, who had talked to him at length about her devotion to Pole. ‘No sooner had our Lily arrived here’, Pole reports, ‘then he tired himself out in his first talk with me in vehemently trying to make me understand how heartily your Excellence wishes me well; and, as if this were something new and not already known to me, I let him go on as long as he liked (which was a long time), awaiting the conclusion he might draw from this’.40 Although Lily did not reproach Pole directly for his failure to reciprocate Colonna’s love, Pole makes this point himself: ‘If this [conclusion] had been, which it deserved to be, that, drawing a comparison between my behaviour and your great, and more than motherly love—to condemn me for my ingratitude … I certainly would have taken pleasure in such a just reproof delivered with that simplicity which I have always treasured in him’. 41 ‘More than motherly love’ (più che materno amore)—the phrase is an intriguing one, 39 ‘[E]t allora me ne vo a Christo tutta sicura et tutta consolata, et mi par di veder V. S. R.ma insiemi con quella divina bontà tutta conforme con la sua rettissima voluntà et che così bisogni alla mia forsi superchia solicitudine’. Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 105. 40 ‘Il nostro Lilio subito che gionto qui nel primo ragionamento con meco si faticava con ogni forza di parole a farmi intendere quanto V. S. Ecc.ma mi vogli bene di core, et come se questo mi fosse stato cosa nova et non prima saputa, lo lassava dire quanto voleva, che durò un gran pezzo, aspettando la conclusione che esso voleva inferire di questo’. Colonna 1892: 309 (Letter CLXXIV, from Padua, 4 October 1546); the English translation is from Jerrold 1906: 310–13, with my emendations. 41 ‘La quale, se fusse stata quella, che meritamente poteva concludere, cioè facendo uno paragone delli miei portamenti verso tanto et più che materno amore, condannarmi d’ingratitudine

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and it suggests that Pole was well aware that the title of ‘mother’ did not fully accommodate the range of Colonna’s feelings. He continues: Ma poichè non concluse altro, io medesimo faro quella conclusione, tanto più a mia confusione quanto io mi sento grandemente errare in questa parte e non mi metto mai a correggere questo mio errore, benchè non posso dire di non avere messo studio di fare quello, che io conosco di dovere in questa parte, ma trovando per esperienza che non mi riesce come desidero, io lo lasso stare, come se Dio mi privasse di questa gratia di poter satisfare all’animo mio in quella cosa che tanto desidero fare, la qual cosa in vero, qualche volta mi dà gran fastidio. 42 But, as he did not conclude thus, I will draw this conclusion myself, as so much the more to my embarrassment as I feel myself to have erred greatly in this and not ever to have set myself to correct the error, although I can’t say that I haven’t worked hard to do that, which I know I ought to do in this regard, but, finding by experience that I can’t succeed as I would like, I let it go, as if God had deprived me of that grace of being able to satisfy my mind in that thing which I so much desire to do, which, in truth, sometimes gives me much trouble.

For Pole to say it was ‘as if God had deprived me of that grace’ (come se Dio mi privasse di questa gratia), was for him to wish that he could have returned her affection: this was the most honest confession he ever made to her. He had tried to love her, and he had failed. At this point in the letter, after having plumbed the depths of his selfreproach, Pole’s tone becomes more pastoral: [L]a qual cosa, in vero, qualche volta mi dà gran fastidio, et cercando di consolarmi, non trovo altra sorte di consolatione, se non che ch’io mi persuado, come ho detto et scritto altre volte a V. Ecc.ma, la volontà divina esser così per dar a lei la piena retributione, che promette a tutti quelli, che sono benefici, donde non si aspetta retributione, come dichiara Nostro Signore nella parabola di coloro, che invitano i poveri ai loro conviti. 43

… io certamente haverei hauto gran piacere di si giusta riprensione fatta con quella simplicità, che sempre ho havuto cara in lui’. Colonna 1892: 309–10. 42 Colonna 1892: 310. Jerrold 1906: 311. 43 Colonna 1892: 310. Jerrold 1906: 311.

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And, when I try to console myself, I find no other form of consolation except to persuade myself, as I have said and written to Your Excellence on other occasions, that the divine will is such that it will give you the full reward that it promises to all of those who do not expect any reward, as our Lord declares in the parable of those who invite the poor to share their feast.

Pole invokes here the Parable of the Guests in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus instructed his disciples: ‘When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind / And thou shalt be blessed’.44 It was with this hope of her future reward, Pole continues, that ‘I console myself, praying to God that he will make you ample restitution with as much affection of the soul as I am found on my part infinitely lacking in it’. He ended by asking for her ‘pardon for my shortcomings’. 45 This is the official end of the correspondence, and of the relationship, between Pole and Colonna. The next mention of her in his letters comes ten days after her death, when he writes to Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo that he was ‘oppressed by pain from the death of the Most Illustrious Lady Vittoria Colonna, whom I worshipped as a mother, and was barely holding myself together’ when he received more bad news about the death of Madruzzo’s own brother. 46 Colonna, for her part, reified her love for Pole in the extraordinary bequest she made him in her last will and testament, where she gave him the bulk of her estate, 9,000 scudi, much to her brother’s dismay. 47 Colonna stopped writing poems, it seems, around the time of her move to Viterbo, and therefore around the time that she developed her dependence on Pole. 48 In her letters to and about Pole, however, we f ind a mingling of Colonna’s spirituality on the one hand and her longing for intimacy on the other that exceeds the boundaries of her sonnets.

44 KJV Luke 14: 13–14. 45 ‘E in questa speranza mi console pregando Dio che li faccia ampla restitutione con tanto maggiore affettione dell’animo, quanto più da mia parte mi sento infinitamente mancare di farlo … perdono dei miei difetti’. Colonna 1892: 310. Jerrold 1906: 312. 46 ‘[C]um ipse dolore oppressus ex morte Ill[ustrissim]ae Dominae Victoriae Columnae, quam matris loco colebam, aegre me sustentarem’. Pole 1744–57: 4:81. Translation by Troy Tower. 47 For transcriptions of Colonna’s two last wills and testaments, see Amante 1896: 48–64. For a discussion of the content of her will, see Targoff 2018: 267–71. 48 For Colonna’s shift from writing religious poetry to prose, see Targoff 2018: 259–60.

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Bibliography Abbrevations Companion

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden.

Primary works Colonna, V. (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. Firpo, M. and D. Marcatto (eds.) (1998–2000) I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557–1567). Vatican City. Giovio, P. (2013) Notable Men and Women of Our Time, ed. and tr. K. Gouwens. Cambridge, MA. King James Bible (2000), ed. American Bible Society. New York. Pole, R. (1744–57) Epistolarum Reginaldi Poli S. R. E. cardinalis et aliorum ad ipsum, ed. A. M. Querini, 5 vols. Brescia. ––– (2002) The Correspondence of Reginald Pole: Volume 1. A Calendar, 1518–1546: Beginnings to Legate of Viterbo, ed. T. F. Mayer. London.

Secondary works Amante, B. (1896) La tomba di Vittoria Colonna e i testamenti finora inediti della poetessa. Bologna. Forcellino, M. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo: Drawings and Paintings’, in Companion: 270–313. Jerrold, M. (1906) Vittoria Colonna, with Some Account of Her Friends and Her Times. London. Mayer, T. F. (2000) Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet. Cambridge, UK. Pagano, S. M. and C. Ranieri (1989) Nuovi documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole. Vatican City. Pierce, H. (2003) Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 1473–1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership. Cardiff. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Tordi, D. (1895) ‘Vittoria Colonna in Orvieto durante la guerra del sale’, Bollettino della Società Umbra di Storia Patria 1: 473–533.

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About the author Ramie Targoff is Professor of English and Co-Chair of Italian Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of Common Prayer (2001), John Donne, Body and Soul (2008), Posthumous Love (2014) and Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna (2018). Her translation of Colonna’s 1538 Rime, entitled Poems of Widowhood, was published in 2021.

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Magistra apostolorum: The Virgin Mary in Birgitta of Sweden and Vittoria Colonna*1 Unn Falkeid

Abstract Vittoria Colonna used a series of role models, such as the heroines of classical mythology, or female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalene, in the construction of her image as an intellectually aspiring and moral exemplary noblewoman. This chapter argues that Birgitta of Sweden (1303–73) should be added to Colonna’s gallery of female models. As an aristocratic widow in Rome with reform inclinations, with a strong public voice, and above all with an extensive textual presence that extended throughout Italy and to other European countries, no one could f it better as Colonna’s exemplum than Birgitta. As this chapter explores, the clearest traces of Birgittine imitations are to be found in Colonna’s radical meditations on the Virgin Mary. Keywords: The Italian legacy of Birgitta of Sweden, reformed Mariology, Sermo Angelicus, the circulation of Birgitta’s revelations in Italian Renaissance, imitation of Mary, Colonna’s spiritual poems.

In three letters addressed to her younger cousin Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini, Vittoria Colonna paints a surprisingly authoritative picture of the Virgin Mary. The letters were collected and published in Venice in 1544 with the title Litere della divina Vetoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara a la Duchessa de Amalfi sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Caterina e sopra * I am most grateful to Virginia Cox and Shannon McHugh for their enthusiastic and thoughtful reading of my chapter as well as for their careful revision of my English prose.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch03

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de la activa di santa Madalena.1 What the title suggests is that the letters focus on two saints who were of special importance for Colonna. Catherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalene represented two forms of spiritual life, the vita contemplativa and the vita activa, which were widely celebrated in Christian tradition and were the objects of a renewed interest in the Italian Renaissance. Despite not appearing in the title, however, the true protagonist of the volume is the Virgin Mary, who in many ways epitomized the fusion of the contemplative and the active life, an ideal for which Colonna herself so eagerly strove. As we can read in the third letter, while Catherine and Magdalene represent two different approaches to the ‘true sun’ (vero sole) whose rays adorn and embellish them both, the Virgin is chosen over all other women.2 She is the glorious queen of Paradise and the woman who gave birth to the sun. Therefore, it is Mary, ‘our most singular patron’ (singularissima patrona), as Colonna calls her in the first letter, whom she encourages Costanza d’Avalos to imitate.3 Mary is given a central role both in the first and the third letter, while the second letter is no less than a long meditation on the Virgin’s elevated status in the celestial hierarchy. Indeed, Mary surpasses all hierarchies, human and divine, kings and princes, seraphim and cherubim. She is superior to everyone, according to Colonna, except to her son, to whom she is only marginally inferior. In addition to being a singularissima patrona, she is ‘strong, wise and most perfect’ (potente, sapiente, perfettissima): ‘And it seems that our Father was content to have shown us his living power through the power of his daughter, and the Son was glad to have chosen in his wisdom such a wise mother, and the Holy Spirit was consoled to see shining in his most perfect bride his own perfect kindness’. 4 The readings of Colonna’s Mary have gone in two different directions. Scholars such as Emidio Campi and Alexander Nagel have interpreted Colonna’s Mariology, as well as her Christology, within the framework of the reformed spirituality of the early Cinquecento.5 What Colonna did, according to Campi, was to adjust or modify the figure of Mary according 1 Colonna 1544. 2 Colonna 1892: 302 (letter CLXX, to Costanza d’Avalos, datable to before 1545). 3 Colonna 1892: 294 (letter CLXVIII, to Costanza d’Avalos, datable to before 1545). 4 ‘et pare che ivi si satii il gran Padre d’haver mostrato la sua invitta potentia nella potente figliola, e il Figliuol gode d’haversi con la sua sapientia ordinata sì sapiente madre, si consola lo Spirito Santo di veder rilucere in questa perfettissima sposa l’ottima sua bontade’. Colonna 1892: 297 (letter CLXIX, to Costanza d’Avalos, datable to before 1545). The translation is taken from Brundin 2008: 150. 5 Campi 1994 and 2016; Nagel 1997: 647–68.

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to the strict scheme of reformed piety professed by Bernadino Ochino, the vicar-general of the newly founded Capuchin order, and for several years also Colonna’s spiritual guide. As Campi suggests, Colonna erases every medieval or popular Marian attribute which was not based upon Scripture or upon a thematic connection with Christ. Mary is completely logical and quite emphatically subjected to Christ. Indeed, even the idea of Mary’s assumption is elided, according to Campi, and as such her role as divine mother and co-redeemer of humanity is removed. As he argues, ‘softly and carefully, while displaying a profound love for Mary, Colonna extinguished some of the brightest stars in the firmament of contemporary spirituality’.6 Abigail Brundin is the scholar who has most convincingly presented the alternative interpretation of Colonna’s Mariology. On the one hand, she argues that Colonna’s reformed Mariology has roots in some important medieval traditions. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, she puts forward the argument that, even though Colonna moved within the theology of the reformers, she does not construct Mary as a subjected, subordinated woman. For Brundin, Mary’s dual, earthly and divine aspects only increase her potential as a powerful and significant model. Colonna’s Mary is the queen of heaven as well as the mother and nurturer of Christ. She works as a mediatrix between heaven and earth, and a teacher and disseminator of the Word, who is allowed to speak publicly. From this, Brundin concludes that ‘the strength of Mary’s spiritual zeal belies her traditional humility’.7 She is not a passive and subservient ancilla (handmaid), which was such a popular figure in the late Middle Ages, but rather the opposite: Colonna stresses Mary’s intrinsic and active role in the life and passion of Christ, and as such she places her within the Holy Trinity of Heaven. This is what leads Brundin to claim that Colonna’s Mary is without precedent in her power and agency. Mary’s role as co-author of mankind’s redemption is, she argues, unique in late medieval piety: ‘The manner in which Colonna inflates Mary’s power and agency is unprecedented. By giving birth to Christ the Virgin has essentially become herself the co-author of mankind’s redemption, an unambiguously powerful role’.8 The question of whether Colonna professed a reformed Mariology is not the main concern of the present chapter. While building on Brundin’s original readings, I will instead be concerned with a possible model for Colonna’s Mariology, Saint Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden (1303–73), which in 6 Campi 2016: 394. 7 Brundin 2008: 118. 8 Brundin 2008: 144.

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my opinion has so far been ignored. Birgitta was one of the central figures in the reform movement of the Italian Trecento, and she was a woman closely linked to the Colonna family in Rome. By the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there was a renewed interest in Birgitta’s Revelaciones (Revelations), above all within reform circles such as the women connected with Girolamo Savonarola in Florence.9 Of greatest importance is that the Virgin Mary plays a pivotal role in Birgitta’s theology, not as a humble maidservant, but as a powerful and authoritative maestra. Thus, what this chapter argues is that the prototype for Colonna’s radical use of Mary is likely to have been the visions of Birgitta of Sweden. Moreover, this chapter serves to call attention more generally to Birgitta’s importance as a prototype for Colonna as a person. They were both aristocratic widows who enjoyed high public visibility and political respect during their lifetimes and who were figures of notable intellectual and spiritual authority.

A prophetic widow in Rome When Birgitta—‘a princess from the Kingdom of Sweden’, as one source presents her—arrived in Rome at the end of 1349, she was a middle-aged widow who had given birth to eight children.10 She was admittedly not a proper principessa, but, as the daughter of Ingeborg Bengstdotter, from the powerful Folkung dynasty, and the knight and ‘lawspeaker’ (lagman) Birger Persson, she belonged to the nobility and had close links to the Swedish Norwegian royal family. When King Magnus Eriksson married the Flemish noblewoman Blanche of Namur in 1335, Birgitta was appointed magistra or mentor for the young queen.11 Birgitta’s influence was notable, and her literary oeuvre reveals a deep familiarity with contemporary political and governmental issues. Moreover, Birgitta and her husband Ulf Gudmarsson, who also was a knight and a leader at the king’s court, were famous for their piety. Together the couple undertook pilgrimages on foot to Nidaros in Norway (in 1339) and to Santiago de Compostela in Spain (in 1341), and they spent long periods in the Benedictine Alvastra monastery outside of Vadstena. According to the hagiographic sources, Birgitta experienced visions from her early childhood onwards. Her prophetic career, however, did not really 9 Herzig 2008. 10 The most authoritative biography of Birgitta is Morris 1999. 11 Morris 1999: 57.

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start until after the death of her husband in the mid-1340s. She then received what is usually referred to as her ‘calling vision’, which paved the way for her future sanctity. This vision configured Birgitta as a divine channel, and, in the following decades, she wrote or dictated to her scribes a massive series of revelations, which soon established her as one of the leading public voices in Europe. These revelations, gathered in her voluminous Revelaciones, concern a number of topics. We find political issues such as the escalating war between England and France, or the wretched state of Rome and its many holy shrines caused by the papacy’s stay in Avignon, together with more everyday worries, such as the economic situation of her household or concerns regarding her somewhat wild son Karl. One interesting aspect of the work is that the revelations inform us about Birgitta’s impressive network. Throughout her long life, she associated with noble families both in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, and her prophetic vocation put her in contact with popes, bishops and powerful clerics as well. When Birgitta settled in Rome, her critique of the Avignon papacy became much sharper. She condemned the ecclesiastic lust for secular power, which she argued had led to a general spiritual drought in the church.12 She complained about simony, unfaithful priests and above all the shameful state of the abandoned city of Rome, where she came to spend the remaining twenty-three years of her life, except for trips around the Italian peninsula and her late pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1371–73). The crux of her visions was her desire to reform the church, combined with her eagerness to see the pope returned to the political and institutional centre of Christendom. Indeed, for Birgitta, these two issues could not be separated. As André Vauchez has described it, ‘from the start, Bridget’s prophetic mission was directed at the reform of the Church, beginning with that of the papacy, which was conditional on its return to Rome’.13 Of great interest for the context of Vittoria Colonna, the Virgin Mary plays a crucial role in Birgitta’s revelations. Except for Christ, no figure appears as often to Birgitta as Christ’s mother. Indeed, in a third of the revelations, Mary is given a prominent place as Birgitta’s interlocutor. In addition, we have Birgitta’s two long prayers in praise of Mary in Quattuor orationes, and above all her liturgical readings, the Sermo Angelicus de Virginis excellentia,

12 Falkeid 2017 explores Birgitta’s profound critique of the Avignon papacy, along with that of six other figures—Dante, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Petrarch and Catherine of Siena. 13 Vauchez 1993: 246.

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which locate Mary at the heart of the Birgittine order.14 Birgitta is the first woman to have founded a monastic order of her own devising, the Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris (Order of the Most Holy Saviour). In Colonna’s time, Birgittine convents were established all over in Europe, the most important one in Italy being the Paradiso in Florence, to which I will return.15 In the late fourteenth century, it was still an aristocratic order that drew its members from the highest social classes. Sermo Angelicus was written for the sisters, to be sung after the divine office. The text consists of twenty-one lessons, three for each day of the week, and every single of them contemplates, as the complete title also makes clear, the worth or excellence of Mary. The lessons were composed by Birgitta in the 1350s and later translated from Swedish into Latin, partly in meter, by her friend from Alvastra, Master Peter Olofsson of Skänninge, who was among the group who followed her to Rome.16 As Bridget Morris has described it, Sermo Angelicus is ‘the most resonant and eloquent expression of Birgitta’s Mariology’, and what it reflects is the history of salvation, with Mary as the true stepping stone between the transitory and eternal life.17 We read about how Mary was present in divine thought from eternity, and how she received the matter of her blessed body from the four elements of the world (Sunday, first reading). Mary brought joy to a world of tears (Sunday, second reading). She is the most excellent of the creatures, and still she is an uncreated being closer to God than the angels (Monday, first reading). She is the ‘micro cosmos’ (minor mundus) who will remain while the rest of the world will perish (Monday, second reading). Adam grieved about his sin, but still rejoiced because he had foreknowledge of the Virgin’s coming (Tuesday, first reading). In the Wednesday readings, the Virgin’s conception and birth are described as well as God’s eternal love for her. The readings for Thursday and Friday focus upon Mary’s beauty, the birth of Christ and his mother’s profound suffering and pain upon his death. The Sermo Angelicus concludes with the Saturday readings, a final celebration the unreserved sublimity of Mary. She is ‘the teacher of the apostles, the comforter of the martyrs, the teacher of confessors, the bright mirror of virgins, the consoler 14 Translations of the Sermo Angelicus de Virginis excellentia and the Quattuor orationes are to be found in Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: IV.159–91, 209–14. 15 For a study on the Florentine convent, see Gregori and Rocchi 1985. 16 Master Peter wrote the hymns, antiphones and responses that accompany the lessons and whose content follows the structure of the Sermo Angelicus, and he composed the musical arrangements as well. The entire work, which came to constitute the content of the Birgittine office, was given the title Cantus sororum (The Song of the Sisters). 17 Morris, ‘Introduction’, in Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: IV.153.

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of widows, the counsellor of the married and the perfect strengthener of everyone in the Catholic faith’.18 Above all, Mary is the mother of the Word (logos), which implies that she has a special knowledge or insight superior to that of learned men. It is striking how Birgitta draws the reader’s attention towards Mary’s intellectual abilities. It was Mary, she argued, and not Mary Magdalene who was the first to discover Christ’s resurrection. She explicitly corrects the scripture at this point: ‘Although the bible also says that Mary Magdalene and the apostles were the first witnesses of the resurrection, there can be no doubt that his worthy mother had certain knowledge of it before they did and that she had seen him alive and risen from the dead before they did’.19 Because of her profound wisdom, according to Birgitta, Mary remained in this world after her son’s ascension in order to instruct the apostles and the confessors ‘who learned perfectly well from her teaching and example’. She even gives Mary the remarkable nickname magistra apostolorum: the ‘teacher of the apostles’.

Birgitta’s Italian legacy Colonna never refers directly to Birgitta in her texts. Still, there is no doubt that Colonna’s Mary—the strong, learned and most perfect (potente, sapiente, perfettissima) woman—as she presents her in the letters to Costanza d’Avalos, had a predecessor in Brigitta’s magistra apostolorum. In Colonna’s time, the cult of Birgitta was strong in Italy, and especially in Naples, where Colonna spent her formative years before she encountered the reform movement in Rome. Birgitta herself visited holy shrines in the kingdom of Naples in the years between 1365 and 1367, where she also befriended Queen Johanna.20 In 1365 Niccolò Acciaiuoli, the banker and Johanna’s chief adviser, hosted her. This 18 ‘magistra apostolorum, confortatrix martyrum, doctrix confessorum, clarissimum speculum virginum, consolatrix viduarum, in conjugio viventium saluberrima monitrix, atque omnium in fide catholica perfectissima roboratrix’. Birgitta of Sweden 1972: XIX.12. The English translation is taken from Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: IV.187, as is that in the following note. 19 ‘Item quamvis etiam Scriptura dicat, quod Christi resurrectionem Magdalena et apostoli prius viderunt, sine dubio tamen credendum est, quod sua mater dignissima antequam illi veraciter hoc sciebat et priusquam illi eum vivum resurrexisse a mortuis vidit’. Birgitta of Sweden 1972: XIX.10. 20 On the friendship between Birgitta and Queen Johanna, see Morris 1999: 122–6. On Birgitta in Naples, see Valerio 1988.

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happened, significantly, in the same year that he hosted Giovanni Boccaccio. Another person she befriended in Naples was Lapa Acciaiuoli, Niccolò’s sister, whose son she cured of a dangerous illness.21 Some years later, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the early 1370s, Birgitta was solemnly received by Johanna, even though she had been harsh in her critique of the queen’s political and personal actions. After Birgitta’s death, Queen Johanna was one of the supporters of the canonization petition, and Naples soon became a centre for the emerging Birgittine devotion. The canonization acts (Acta et Processus) attest that Birgittine miracles took place in Naples, and there were early depictions of her in four of the city’s churches. In some churches, her Revelaciones were read, and the city was the location for one of the earliest Birgittine scriptoria.22 The oldest complete manuscripts of Birgitta’s Revelaciones were produced in Naples, one of which, the so-called Palermo manuscript, was probably commissioned by Queen Johanna.23 In Colonna’s time there was also at least one church dedicated to Birgitta in Naples, Santa Brigida dei Calfati (built in the early Quattrocento). Later, two other churches were erected: Santa Brigida a Posillipo (1573), and the sanctuary of Santa Brigida (1609) in the street that still bears her name, Via Santa Brigida.24 Birgitta enjoyed great popularity in Naples over time, although her cult lost its prophetic and political connotations, as Adriana Valerio has observed.25 The cult in Naples transformed in the direction of a strong Marian devotion, which was certainly not foreign to Birgittine spirituality, as we have seen. Moreover, the Neapolitan Birgitta was celebrated early on as an exemplary widow, that is, a pious woman devoted to a life of prayers. Undeniably, both these aspects underpin the hypothesis of Birgittine influence on Colonna.26 However, the more rebellious and prophetic aspects of Birgitta’s spirituality were a legacy inherited above all by the Tuscans, and especially by the Birgittine convent Santa Brigida al Paradiso outside Florence, the first Birgittine community in Italy (established in 1392). By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the convent could boast of a long 21 Acta 1924–31: 331. Niccolò Acciaiuoli was a friend of both Petrarch and Boccaccio. Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris is dedicated to Andrea, Niccolò’s and Lapa’s sister. See Valerio 1988: 83n8. 22 Acta 1924–31: 166–73, mentions four Neapolitan churches: Santa Maria del Carmelo, San Girogio Maggiore, San Eligio and San Antonio de Vienna extra Muros. See also Morris 1999: 139. 23 Aili 2003: 53–72, especially 62. According to Aili, the copies of the Revelaciones that were made for the canonization process were produced in Naples. 24 Valerio 1988: 90–1. 25 Valerio 1988: 90–1. 26 On Colonna’s own status as exemplary widow, see Anna Wainwright’s chapter in this volume.

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tradition of different prophetic movements connected to Birgitta’s name. The convent also became an important centre for copying, translation and distribution of Birgittine texts. Under Birgitta’s oversight, her father confessor Alfonso Pecha de Vadaterra translated the revelations into Latin. Moreover, on Birgitta’s request, he copied and organized her visions into the form known to us today, the eight books of her Revelaciones.27 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Birgittine texts circulated widely in Italy. The revelations were copied, translated and gathered in different compilations, and later printed in both Italian and Latin editions.28 Thus, Birgitta quickly became a popular figure in Italy. She was celebrated particularly by Domenicans, who connected her to Catherine of Siena in terms of the two women’s shared prophetic charisma. From as early as the 1370s, there was frequent contact between the supporters of Birgitta and Catherinian circles, and it was one of Catherine’s scribes, the Sienese Cristoforo di Gano Guidini, who in the 1390s translated the first complete edition of Birgitta’s Revelaciones into Italian.29 Important translations were also produced in the scriptorium of the Paradiso convent outside Florence in 1494 and 1495. Of great interest is that the Paradiso manuscripts were completed at a moment when Birgitta’s message of reform would have been especially appealing in the Tuscan city. The Medici had been ousted from power, Charles VIII had invaded Italy, and the preacher Savonarola, who himself claimed prophetic visions, ruled indirectly through his supporters over the city of Florence from 1494 to 1498. A significant figure in the Florentine context is Domenica Narducci da Paradiso (1473–1553), a former Birgittine who became a Dominican nun. Narducci, who became a famous preacher, collaborated with Savonarola 27 In the years after Birgitta’s death Alfonso was also a key figure in the canonization process, in which her revelations were presented to the pope, along with her vitae and a series of testimonies and supporting documents. The canonization took place in Rome in 1391. 28 For a short discussion of the first Latin manuscript, see Morris, ‘Introduction’, in Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: I.17–22. The first complete printed edition in Latin, the editio princeps, is the so-called Ghotan edition, printed in Lübeck in 1491. On the Italian manuscript tradition see Pezzini 2008: 139–66. The impact of Birgitta’s Revelaciones in Italy is the topic of the international research project The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics and Reform in Renaissance Italy, led by Falkeid and funded by The Research Council of Norway (2018–21). The project’s database provides qualitative and quantitative information about the circulation of Birgitta’s texts in the Italian peninsula from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. 29 Guidini also translated Catherine’s Dialogo into Latin. See Pezzini 2008: 381. Nocentini 2019 describes the diffusion of Birgitta’s and Catherine’s writings within Observant reform circles, stressing their remarkably widespread circulation and their ability to cross religious and linguistic boundaries. Birgitta’s text also circulated within Franciscan circles, although this has not yet been fully investigated.

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during his puritanical campaign in the 1490s, and both then and later in her life, she referred to Birgitta as her spiritual model.30 Before I return to Domenica Narducci, it is also important to note that, thirty years after Savonarola’s campaign, the publication of Birgitta’s corpus coincided with another reform movement. In the early years of the Italian Reformation, the Florentine printer Francesco di Giovanni Benvenuto published a popular apocryphal prophecy attributed to Birgitta under the title Prophetia di Sancta Brigida. The print is dated January 1529, which according to modern reckoning is January 1530, that is, about three months into the catastrophic Siege of Florence.31 On this occasion, Domenica Narducci once again played a significant role. Given the broad diffusion of Birgitta’s text, it is likely that Colonna knew the prophetic voice of the Swedish principessa, as well as her strong Marian devotion. She may have received inspiration both from Naples and from the reform movement in Florence, with which several of her friends were in contact, including Bernardino Ochino and Caterina Cibo. Interesting evidence of this is offered by a sermon by Domenica Narducci, dated October 1533. The sermon is addressed to Caterina Cibo, duchess of Camerino, who later became a close friend and collaborator of Colonna in their common defence of the reform-minded Capuchin friars, and in it Narducci presents Birgitta as a spiritual model, both in terms of her prophetic activity and her reform ideas. According to Narducci, Birgitta ‘opened the books, read the Sacred Scriptures, and wrote to prelates and many other people that they should love God’.32 Moreover, she presents Birgitta as an exemplary widow—a woman dedicated to the work of God, to the education of her children and to Christian government of her subordinates. The same is repeated in a letter of July 1534, also addressed to Caterina Cibo, which reveals the great respect Birgitta enjoyed. Narducci praises her intellectual capacities and her piety, as well as her courage to speak in public. Other persons within Colonna’s circle who were exposed to Birgitta and her legacy are the Cardinals Gasparo Contarini, Pietro Bembo and Reginald Pole. An important intermediary role in this context was played 30 An important study on Domenica Narducci is Gagliardi 2007. See also Tamar Herzig’s fascinating 2008 book on Savonarola’s Women. Herzig briefly discusses Savonarola’s relationship to Birgitta, noting how he carefully attempted to distance himself from Joachim of Fiore and female saints, while referring to Birgitta as a true prophetess (Herzig 2008: 22). 31 For the date of the Prophetia di Sancta Birgida, see Edit16, the website of the Census of Italian Sixteenth-Century Editions, record identifier 32699. 32 ‘Apriva i libri, leggeva le Sacre Scritture et scriveva a’ prelati et a molta gente che amassino Dio’. Valerio 1999: 148.

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by the Swedish brothers Johannes and Olaus Magnus.33 When Sweden was one of the first countries in Europe to undergo the Reformation, Johannes, who was the archbishop in Uppsala, travelled to Rome together with his younger brother Olaus. In Rome, they hoped to persuade the pope to unite his forces with the emperor’s, and, by waging war against the Protestants, to save the church, not only in Sweden, but in the other Nordic countries as well. Arriving in Rome in 1537, the expelled brothers laid their case before Contarini, Pole and Gian Pietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV—all of whom were powerful cardinals.34 Two years later, in 1539, Pole and Bembo, both close friends of Colonna, summoned the Swedish brothers to Rome on behalf of the pope.35 The brothers now settled in Rome, where among other things they re-established the Birgittine house and the church of Santa Brigida at Piazza Farnese. They received considerable support in this task from both Pole and Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, who, like Pole and Colonna, was an eager defender of the Capuchin order.36 When Johannes died in 1544, Pope Paul III appointed Olaus as his brother’s successor to the archbishopric of Uppsala, although only in name, as Sweden was no longer a Catholic country. Olaus was then sent by the pope, together with Pole and others, to the Council of Trent, which he attended between 1545 and 1549. After returning from the council, Olaus established a book press in Casa di Santa Brigida (Birgitta’s house) in Piazza Farnese in Rome, and in 1557 he published a complete Latin edition of her Revelaciones, with a series of beautiful wood cuts. The motive for this publication is unclear, but it may be conjectured that Olaus was concerned for Birgitta’s reputation, since her name by that time was associated with evangelical reform circles. Birgitta had for almost two centuries been the Scandinavian people’s channel to the papal curia. Olaus may have published his exclusive edition of Birgitta’s Revelaciones to avert the risk that she might be condemned by the newly established Roman Inquisition, as happened with numerous figures and texts connected to the evangelical movement. With his edition, Olaus Magnus attempted to establish Birgitta firmly on the Catholic side. However, a certain ambiguity lingered for a long time, as her name intermittently appeared on the Inquisition’s lists of prohibited books in the Italian Counter-Reformation.

33 34 35 36

An important study on Olaus Magnus is Johannesson 1991. Johannesson 1991: 69. On Colonna’s relationship with Pole, see the chapter by Ramie Targoff in this volume. See the letter exchange between Pole and Johannes Magnus in Pole 2002: 330–1.

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The imitable widow A series of networks, events and locations all connect Vittoria Colonna to Birgitta of Sweden. Ramie Targoff describes in her compelling biography how Colonna’s piety strongly intensified from the middle of the 1530s.37 In 1534, she left the island of Ischia, where, for the second time in her life, she had spent some fruitful years at the court of Costanza d’Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla. When she re-entered Rome, Colonna had grown into a mature and self-confident poet, with an impressive network of learned and literary acquaintances throughout the Italian peninsula. In Rome, she settled in the convent of San Silvestro in Capite, one of the two communities for Franciscan women established by Cardinal Giacomo Colonna (d. 1318) in Rome in the beginning of the fourteenth century. The other convent was San Lorenzo in Panisperna. Both communities were connected to the Colonna family, and both subscribed to the rule of Saint Isabelle of France, the only convents in Italy to do so.38 The communities had important similarities, although San Silvestro became, as Emily E. Graham has explained, more embedded in the Colonna family’s identity and patrimony than San Lorenzo. It was therefore understable why Vittoria Colonna chose San Silvestro as her home. However, she may also have been attracted to these two churches on account of some highly interesting Birgittine connections. San Lorenzo in Panisperna was a church that even in Colonna’s time was closely associated with Birgitta. The saint had spent much time in the church. The convent’s aristocratic nuns were among her closest friends and supporters in Rome, and San Lorenzo was the church in which she expressly chose to be buried. After Birgitta’s death in 1373, one of Vittoria’s ancestors, Cardinal Agapito Colonna (1325–80) was, together with Queen Johanna of Naples and others, among the inner circle of her supporters who promoted the canonization petition of Birgitta, and he appointed his niece as the convent’s abbess, while his sister was an important member of the convent of San Silvestro in Capite. The idea was evidently that the growing Birgittine cult would promote the religious capital of the Colonna family in Rome. Perhaps this was also Vittoria Colonna’s plan? The choice of San Silvestro in Capite as her new home may be understood as a way to position herself, in a complementary way, with Birgitta. Associations with the Swedish widow in the ‘sister convent’ would obviously enhance Colonna’s own pursuit of an identity as a virtuous aristocratic widow in these years. 37 Targoff 2018: 111–31. 38 Graham 2017.

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Well settled in Rome, Colonna’s life took a new turn when she came in contact with the evangelical reform movements and above all with the charismatic Capuchin friar Bernardino Ochino. In a letter to Isabella d’Este, dated 12 March 1535, Isabella’s relative, Agostino Gonzaga, wrote that he had observed Vittoria Colonna during Lent in San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome. It was obviously an unusual sight, because, as Gonzaga explains, Colonna preferred a quiet life among the sisters of San Silvestro in Capite.39 Two mornings that year, Ochino held his Lent sermons in San Lorenzo in Damaso. Colonna was enthralled by the friar’s fervid sermons, and, from that moment, he came to serve as her spiritual inspiration and guide. 40 It is worth noting that it was in San Lorenzo in Damaso that Birgitta wrote her Sermo Angelicus in the 1350s. During her first years in Rome, Birgitta lived in a house adjacent to the church, which later was replaced by the Cancelleria. From the window of her room, Birgitta had a view directly to the high altar of the church, and the sources tell that it was from this position the angel arrived to her, conveying the extraordinary Sermo Angelicus. 41 Whether Colonna was aware that the Lent sermons were held at the same spot where Birgitta wrote her Sermo Angelicus, we do not know. In the context of early modern piety, however, which demonstrated a profound attentiveness to place in general, and held holy sites in reverence, it is not unlikely that Colonna had Birgitta’s visions in mind. Colonna revealed her deep sense of holy places the year after this in her attempts to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.42 Even this may reflect a desire to imitate Birgitta. However, in contrast to the Swedish widow, Colonna never managed to realize the journey.

The burning rays of the true sun As Virginia Cox has discussed in her article on the exemplary Vittoria Colonna, the poet was highly self-conscious and artful in her own literary imitation and self-modelling. 43 Colonna used a series of exempla or role models, such as the heroines of classical mythology, or female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalene, in the construction of her 39 The letter is quoted in Luzio 1885: 26; and in Campi 2016, 373. See also Targoff 2018: 111 and 119–20. 40 Campi 2016: 373. 41 Birgitta of Sweden 1972: Prologus 4–6; Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: IV.159. 42 On Colonna’s planned journey to Jerusalem, see Targoff 2018: 125–31. 43 Cox 2016a.

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image as an intellectual aspiring and moral exemplary noblewoman. To this gallery of female models, it would be reasonable to add Birgitta of Sweden. As an aristocratic widow in Rome with reform inclinations, with a strong public voice, and above all with an extensive textual presence that extended throughout Italy and to other European countries, no one could be more fitting as Colonna’s exemplum than Birgitta. It is likely that she was one of her models as a person. However, the clearest traces of Birgittine imitations are to be found in Colonna’s many meditations on the Virgin Mary, who of course was among her models as well, indeed maybe the most powerful one. From the mid-1530s, Colonna became a central figure in the evangelical movement in Rome. Concurrently, the Virgin Mary played an increasingly important role in her spiritual life. As Eleonora Carinci has argued, it is a paradox that Mary was so significant for her in a period when contemporaneously she became such a controversial figure, especially within the groups Colonna frequented.44 The theological reformers of the Cinquecento—Luther, Calvin and, even more importantly for Colonna, Juan de Valdés and Bernardino Ochino—strongly rejected the Catholic cult of Mary: a cult that, in the reformers’ opinion, verged on idolatry. They therefore advised believers to keep their honouring of Mary to a minimum. Perhaps Colonna sensed Mary’s fate among the reformers and wanted to rescue her from her dethronement? Whatever the answer to this question may be, it seems clear that Colonna emphasised Mary’s role more insistently in female contexts than in company with men, as the letter to Costanza d’Avalos this chapter opened with testifies. Moreover, Mary plays a pivotal role in Colonna’s spiritual poems as well, and I would argue that in these texts her representations of Mary bear many resemblances to Birgitta’s magistra apostolorum. In a series of sonnets she describes Mary as ‘blessed mother’ (S1: 105, madre divina), ‘Our Lady’ (S1: 104, la donna nostra), ‘clear and sure star of our sea’ (S1: 101, stella del nostro mar chiara e sicura), ‘the queen of heaven’ (S1: 100, 131, donna del cielo), and ‘a mother for God on earth’ (S1: 106, madre a Dio in terra). 45 All of these images are part of late medieval Marian devotion, as they are prominently present in Birgitta’s representations as well. One sonnet, however, is of especial interest as it depicts Mary in all her glory (S2: 22): Rinasca in te il mio cor quest’almo giorno che naque a noi colei di cui nascesti, 44 Carinci 2016: 424. 45 Numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982.

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l’animo excelso tuo l’ale ne presti per gir volando al vero alto soggiorno. Di mille rai da pria consperso intorno era ’l suo mortal velo, e mille desti sempre al ben far pensieri ali ed onesti, poi dentro il fer di maggior lume adorno. So ch’ella prega te per noi, o pio Signor, prega tu lei che preghi in modo ch’io senta oprar in me sua vital forza, ond’io sciogliendo, anzi spezzando ’l nodo che qui mi lega, questa umana scorza serva a lo spirto, e sol lo spirto a Dio. 46 Let my heart be reborn in you on this glorious day / on which she who bore you was herself born, / and may your divine being lend my heart wings / to fly up to its true lofty resting place. / Her mortal body was from the beginning surrounded / by a thousand rays of light, and you gave her / a thousand noble and honest inspirations to do good, / which made that body shine with yet a greater light within. / I know that she prays to you on our behalf, but, / Holy Father, pray to her that through her prayers / her vital energy may fill my being / so that I untie or even break apart the knots / that bind me to this place, and this mortal shell / will serve my spirit alone, and my spirit only God.

In the sonnet, Colonna creates a subtle bond between herself and the Virgin. The poet implores to be reborn on the very same day that Mary, who at Christmas Eve bore the Christ child (‘che naque a noi’), once was born. In light of one of Birgitta’s visions (Rev. VI: 88), I would argue that this is not only a prayer for being morally renewed. In the vision, which is penned early in her widowhood, Birgitta tells of how, on Christmas Eve, she experienced Christ’s incarnation in her heart ‘like that of a living child turning and turning around’.47 The experience is usually described as Birgitta’s mystical pregnancy, and the idea is that it turned her heart, like Mary’s womb, into a vessel filled with the word of God. In the same vision the Virgin explains to Birgitta that she has entrusted her with the mission of proclaiming God’s will throughout the world. Thus, Birgitta’s imitatio Mariae authorized her 46 Transcription and translation from Colonna 2005: 62–3 (with capitalization emended). 47 Birgitta of Sweden 1991: VI.88.1: ‘quasi si in corde esset puer viuus et voluens se et reuoluens’. The English translation is taken from Birgitta of Sweden 2006–15: III.155.

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prophetic speech, as Claire L. Sahlin has noted.48 Colonna’s prayer does not take place on Christmas Eve. The incarnation is, however, strikingly present in the way that the Virgin to whom Colonna appeals is indeed the mother who once gave birth to logos. As such, the prayer may be read as a request of that the wise Mary may authorize the poet’s words as well. Another remarkable aspect of the sonnet is how Colonna represents Mary as the true power of the universe. She is not only the mediatrix on behalf of human beings. She is also the person to whom God himself turns to in prayer (‘O Signor, prega tu’). This is a far cry both from the medieval ancilla Dei as well as the reformers’ strict image of the rational, but humble Mary. Colonna’s image, which in fact reverses the traditional hierarchy, has much more in common with Birgitta’s sovereign Mary, who accepted the plea of God when she replied to the angel Gabriel’s message. As Birgitta conclusively describes God’s mother in Sermo Angelicus, Mary’s autonomy and assertive action in the creation made her apt to be called ‘the tree of life’, who bends or inclines herself towards those who pray so that they can receive her precious fruit, the body of Christ. Mary is, in other words, the true administrator of the host. A final aspect worth noting in Colonna’s sonnet is how the Virgin is illuminated ‘by a thousand rays of light’ (di mille rai). The same image is repeated in Colonna’s perhaps most famous Marian sonnet, ‘Vergine pura’ (S1: 100, ‘Pure Virgin’). The sonnet evokes the scene of the Nativity, and as such it strongly resembles one of Birgitta’s most celebrated visions, the vision of the Nativity in Book VII of her Revelaciones (Rev. VII: 21). The entire seventh book is an account of Birgitta’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land at the end of her life, and the Nativity represents its peak. What is strikingly innovative with this intimate vision is how Birgitta describes the birth. In contrast to the more traditional medieval iconography in which Mary is lying down in her childbed, Birgitta’s Mary is kneeling in prayer at the moment of birth. What is also remarkable, is how she is illuminated by an ineffable light and splendour that emanate from her child and surround her in such a way that even the sun cannot compare to it, according to Birgitta. In a similar way, Colonna’s Mary is purified in a flow of heavenly light while she beholds her newborn son (S1: 100): Vergine pura, che dai raggi ardenti del vero sol ti godi eterno giorno, il cui bel lume in questo vil soggiorno tenne i begli occhi tuoi paghi e contenti; 48 Sahlin 2001: 78–109.

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Uomo il vedesti, e Dio, quando i lucenti suoi spirti fer l’albergo umil adorno di chiari lumi, e timidi d’intorno i tuoi ministri al grand’ufficio intenti. 49 Pure Virgin, you who in the burning rays / of the true sun bask in eternal day, / whose beautiful light, during your toilsome earthly life, / kept your lovely eyes serene and contented; / you beheld him, both man and God, when his / bright spirits adorned his humble dwelling / with a great light, and your ministers timidly / gathered round intent on their great office.

Despite the fact that Vittoria Colonna never mentions Birgitta, no role model could be more suitable for her, as I have tried to argue in this chapter. Birgitta was, indeed, a perfect role model, as a high-status widow, leading an active life in the world, and as someone prepared to engage publicly in political and religious controversy. A series of events, locations, ideas and networks connect the two women. Above all, both women celebrated the unlimited power and sovereignty of the celestial queen and located her at the centre of their reformed spirituality. As such they paved the way for Renaissance women writers who continually praised the sublimity of Mary as their most important female role model.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden.

Primary works Acta (1924–31). Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte, ed. I. Collijn. Uppsala. Birgitta of Sweden, Saint (1972) Sermo Angelicus, in Opera minora 2. Uppsala. ––– (1991) Revelaciones. Uppsala. ––– (2006–15) The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. B. Morris, tr. D. Searby, 4 vols. Oxford.

49 Transcription and translation from Colonna 2005: 130–3 (with capitalization emended).

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Colonna, V. (1544) Litere della divina Vetoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara a la Duchessa de Amalfi sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Caterina e sopra de la activa di santa Madalena. Venice. ––– (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. Pole, R. (2002), The Correspondence of Reginald Pole. Volume 1. A Calendar, 1518–1546: Beginnings to Legate of Viterbo, ed. T. F. Mayer. London.

Secondary works Aili, H. (2003) ‘Handskrifterna till Birgittas revelationer’, in Birgitta av Vadstena. Pilgrim och profet 1303–1373, ed. P. Beskow and A. Landen. Stockholm: 53–72. Brundin, A. (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Farnham. Campi, E. (1994) Michelangelo e Vitoria Colonna. Un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino, e altri saggi di storia della Riforma. Turin. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Bernadino Ochino’, in Companion: 371–98. Carinci, E. (2016) ‘Religious prose writings’, in Companion: 399–432. Cox, V. (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. Falkeid, U. (2017) The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena. Cambridge, MA. Gagliardi, I. (2007) Sola con Dio. La missione di Domenica da Paradiso nella Firenze del primo cinquecento. Florence. Graham, E. E. (2017) ‘Memorializing identity: the foundation and reform of San Lorenzo in Panisperna’, Franciscan Studies, 75: 467–95. Gregori, M. and G. Rocchi (1985) Il ‘Paradiso’ in Pian di Ripoli. Studi e ricerche su un antico monastero. Florence. Herzig, T. (2008) Savonarola’s Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy. Chicago. Johannesson, K. (1991) The Renaissance of the Goths in Sixteenth-Century Sweden: Johannes and Olaus Magnus as Politicians and Historians. Berkeley, LA. Luzio, A. (1885) ‘Vittoria Colonna’, Rivista storica mantovana 1: 1–52. Morris, B. (1999) Birgitta of Sweden. Woodbridge, UK. Nagel, A. (1997) ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, The Art Bulletin 79: 647–68. Nocentini, S. (2019), ‘The transmission of Birgittine and Catherinian works within the mystical tradition: exchanges, cross-readings, connections’, in Sanctity and

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Female Authorship in the Fourteenth Century and Beyond: Birgitta of Sweden & Catherine of Siena, ed. U. Falkeid and M. H. Oen. London: 93–112. Pezzini, D. (2008) The Translation of Religious Texts in the Middle Ages. Bern. Sahlin, C. L. (2001) Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy. Woodbridge, UK. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Valerio, A. (1988) ‘Brigida di Svezia a Napoli: Da una presenza politica ad un culto devozionale’, Birgittiana 5: 81–94. ––– (1999). ‘Caterina Cibo e la spiritualità savonaroliana attraverso il magistero profetico di Domenica da Paradiso’, in Munera parva. Studi in onore di Boris Ulianich, ed. G. Luongo. Naples: 141–54. Vauchez, A. (1993) The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. D.E. Bornstein; tr. M. J. Schneider. South Bend, IN.

About the author Unn Falkeid is Professor of History of Ideas at the University of Oslo. Her publications include The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena (2017). Falkeid is currently Principal Investigator of The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden, funded by The Research Council of Norway.

4. Outdoing Colonna: Widowhood Poetry in the Late Cinquecento*1 Anna Wainwright

Abstract This chapter examines the influence of Colonna’s widowed poetry on three women writers of the second half of the sixteenth century: Laura Battiferri, Chiara Matraini and Francesca Turina. I demonstrate how Colonna’s famous proemial sonnet, Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia, and her widowed persona more broadly, is reflected in the works of these later poets. This study also significantly elongates the timeline of Colonna’s influence, proving just how late her rime vedovili were being imitated and explored: deep into the Counter-Reformation, Turina and Matraini were still engaging directly with her work as a way to legitimate their own authorial voices. The chapter’s evidence also troubles longstanding scholarly understandings about how ‘anxiety of influence’ has worked for women writers. Keywords: widowhood poetry, Counter-Reformation, anxiety of influence, madrigals

To the reader or scholar versed in Vittoria Colonna’s remarkable life story, her poetry and her high-profile friendships, the proemial sonnet of her rime amorose is nothing less than a classic. Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia ch’al cor mandar le luci al mondo sole, * My thanks go to Virginia Cox for her invaluable suggestions on multiple drafts of this piece. I am also indebted to Maria Serena Sapegno and Abigail Brundin for their infinitely helpful comments, and to my generous early readers Shannon McHugh and Jessica Goethals. I am also grateful for the helpful comments of the anonymous readers for the press. This essay is part of my broader investigation of widowhood and politics in early modern Italian literature and culture, Widow City.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch04

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e non per giunger lume al mio bel Sole al chiaro spirto, a l’onorata spoglia. Giusta cagion a lamentar m’invoglia; ch’io scemi la sua gloria assai mi dole; per altra voce e più sagge parole convien ch’a Morte il gran nome si toglia. La pura fe’, l’ardor, l’intensa pena mi scusi appo ciascun, che ’l grave pianto è tal che tempo né ragion l’affrena. Amaro lagrimar, non dolce canto, foschi sospiri e non voce serena, di stil no, ma di duol mi danno il vanto.1 I write solely to salve the suffering that those bright eyes, peerless in this world, caused my heart, and not to add luster to my lovely Sun, to his radiant spirit and honoured remains. A just cause leads me to lament, and it sorely pains me that I may detract from his glory; his great name deserves to be rescued from death by a loftier voice and wiser words. May my pure faith, my ardour, my intense grief excuse me, for my mourning is such that neither reason nor time can restrain it. Bitter weeping, not sweet song; dark sighs, not a serene voice: my verse boasts not of style but of woe.

In this much lauded poem, Colonna lays out the motivations behind her ambitious literary project to document her widowed grief after the loss of her husband Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos in 1525 following the Battle of Pavia. From the outset of the poem, Colonna privileges her ‘authentic’ grief over poetic style and glory, declaring that she writes not in order to amplify the fame of the man she describes throughout her work as her ‘Sole’ or Sun, but ‘only’ to expiate the terrible pain she feels. She laments for ‘just cause’, thereby establishing what Maria Serena Sapegno calls a ‘legitimate ethics’ for her poetry.2 Proper glorification of her husband, Colonna declares, should be left to ‘another voice and wiser words’: she can but offer her ‘pure faith’, ‘ardency’ and ‘intense pain’ as the motivation for her ‘grave lament’. The final tercet underlines that she is not the right writer for the grand memorialization project her beloved husband deserves: her words are not the 1 Colonna (A1: 1), with transcription and translation from Cox (ed.) 2013: 134. Numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982. 2 Sapegno 2016: 154.

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‘sweet song’ necessary to bring him eternal fame, but base ‘bitter weeping’; her voice is not ‘serene’, but filled with ‘dark sighs’. The reader, of course, has been in on the joke from the very first line. As Abigail Brundin has observed, Colonna is asking her audience to ‘collude’ with her in this poem by proclaiming her ‘lack’ of style in masterful Dantean and Petrarchan language, interlacing her protestations of being no more than a pitiable widow who writes ‘only’ to relieve her grief with a poetic mastery and elegance few others could hope to achieve.3 She competes ably with her model Petrarch both in the depths of her grief over the loss of the beloved and in the poetic manifestation of that grief. 4 With this sonnet, and the remarkable collection of poems that should be classified not only as her rime amorose, but more precisely as her widowed verse, Colonna established herself as the ideal widow, lauded by her most illustrious contemporaries for her devotion, and for the unique nature of her poetic project.5 Her public performance of grief, furthermore, was directly linked to her value as a woman poet. Most famously, Ariosto begins Canto 37 of his final 1532 iteration of Orlando furioso by singling out Colonna as the ideal woman writer precisely because of her identity as a devoted widow, praising her poetic immortalization of her husband as so exemplary that she has surpassed even the classical paragon Artemisia, who drank her husband’s ashes and built a magnificent funeral monument to honour him:6 Questa è un’altra Artemisia, che lodata fu di pietà verso il suo Mausolo; anzi tanto maggior, quanto è più assai bell’opra, che por sotterra un uom, trarlo di sopra.7 She is another Artemisia, who was praised for devotion to her Mausolus: indeed, she is so much the greater in that to rescue a man from the grave is a feat so much more splendid than to bury him.

3 Brundin 2008: xi. On the development of authorial voice in the proemial sonnet, see especially Sapegno 2003. 4 See Cox (ed.) 2013: 134 for an audit of the poem’s Petrarchan influences. 5 Indeed, Sapegno and Crivelli have both argued that the rime amorose themselves should be considered as much in morte poems as they are amorous ones. See especially Sapegno 2003: 17; Crivelli 2014: 122n24. See also Cox 2008: 76–81 on Colonna as the ideal widow. 6 See especially Ascoli 2011 on the relationship between Colonna and the action of the Furioso’s Canto 37. 7 Ariosto 1964: 1260–1 (37.18). Translation from Ariosto 1974: 443.

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Ariosto is specific in his praise, and this specificity is crucial for our understanding of why Colonna was so admired as a widowed poet during her lifetime. More than simply mourning her husband, she turns her grief into poetry and thus makes her husband immortal, in the process transforming herself from an everyday widow into an exemplary one. In her canny audacity, Colonna offered widowed writers a robust model for imitation that brimmed over with hybrid vigour: Petrarchan lover mixed with heroic woman. This essay considers how this aspect of Colonna’s legacy influenced the poetic self-presentation of three later widowed poets of the sixteenth century who not only imitated her, but who placed themselves in stylistic and affective competition with her through their allusions to her proemial sonnet. As the study of Colonna as a poetic and cultural influencer has blossomed over the last two decades, much has been written about her contemporary fame, and her own careful self-fashioning as a figure to be imitated.8 We now have a remarkably clear picture of just how important Colonna’s reputation as an ideal widow was during her lifetime, as well as the particular ways in which her verse was printed and ordered for the reading public following the first pirated edition of 1538. Indeed, Ramie Targoff’s recent biography of Colonna opens with the news of d’Avalos’s death, a moment universally viewed as formative in Colonna’s poetic life.9 Building on that scholarship, here I explore how Laura Battiferri (1523–89), Chiara Matraini (1515–1604) and Francesca Turina (1553–1641) engaged with and borrowed from Colonna’s poetics of widowhood in order to elevate their own widowed verse, and their status as women poets. A look to these three poets also significantly elongates the timeline of Colonna’s influence, proving just how late Colonna’s rime vedovili were being imitated and explored: deep into the Counter-Reformation, Turina and Matraini were still engaging directly with her work as a way to legitimate their own authorial voices, with Turina praising the honour she brought to women as late as her own Rime of 1628.10

8 See especially Cox 2005a, 2008: 76–81, and 2016a; Brundin 2008; Robin 2012; McHugh 2013; Goethals 2014. 9 Targoff 2018, especially 11–18. 10 On the general scholarly neglect of literature from this period, see Cox 2020 and Quondam 2020. We now know that Colonna’s inf luence extended even further than the CounterReformation: see Tatiana Crivelli’s chapter in this volume for a discussion of Colonna’s founding importance for the Arcadia movement in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of particular note is a widowhood sonnet by Prudenza Gabrielli Capizucchi (1654–1709), ‘Talor di mia magion la più romita’, which shares remarkable resonances with the poets under consideration here (pp. 364–65).

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Colonna and the Italian poetics of widowhood Several critics have observed that the conspicuous nature of Colonna’s widowhood provided her with a remarkably free space in which she could write, correspond and contemplate spiritual ideas without having to fulfil the usual duties of an aristocratic wife.11 Nevertheless, she was also clearly attentive to the important role of the widow in society and in literature particularly; with her rime vedovili, Colonna took on a central role in a long-established lineage of widows advocating publicly for their husbands postmortem in the Italian literary tradition.12 The heavy ethical responsibility assigned to the widow is perhaps best exemplified in Dante’s Purgatorio. In Canto 5, the nobleman Bonconte da Montefeltro, who died on the battlefield at Campaldino, complains to the pilgrim Dante that he is still stuck in AntePurgatory because his wife Giovanna has forgotten about him: Io fui di Montefeltro, io son Bonconte. Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura, per ch’io vo tra costor con bassa fronte.13 I was from Montefeltro, I am Buonconte. Neither Giovanna nor any other takes care for me, so I go with lowered brow among these people.

Later, as Dante has nearly completed his journey up the mountain, he meets his friend and poetic rival, Forese Donati, who has not been dead five years, yet has already arrived at the Terrace of Gluttony, only two terraces below the Earthly Paradise. Donati proudly tells the pilgrim that his quick progress up the mountain is due to the work of his ‘vedovella’ or little widow Nella, who has considerably shortened his time on the mountain through her ‘unbroken weeping’ and ‘sighs’: an alchemic combination of prayerful speech, and the ceaseless public performance of her grief. … Sì tosto m’ha condotto a ber lo dolce assenzo d’i martìri, la Nella mia con suo pianger dirotto. Con suoi prieghi devoti e con sospiri tratto m’ha de la costa ove s’aspetta, e liberato m’ha de li altri giri. 11 Sapegno 2016: 146. Cox 2008: 114–15. 12 See Clark 2007. 13 Dante, Pur. 5.88–90 (Alighieri 1996–2011: II.82–3, translation by Durling and Martinez).

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Tanto è a Dio più cara e più diletta la vedovella mia, che molto amai, quanto in bene operare è più soletta.14 With her devoted prayers and sighs she has drawn me from the shore of waiting, and she has freed me from the other circles. My little widow, whom I dearly loved, is the dearer to God and more beloved the more isolated she is in her good actions.

The contrasting fates of the two shades—one left abandoned and one moving triumphantly up the mountain—are directly linked to the rhetorical labour and power of their wives on earth. The fervent poetic demonstrations of grief employed by Colonna in verse—the sighs and bitter weeping—bear close resemblance to the tools used by Nella Donati to negotiate her husband’s swift ascent up the mountain of Purgatory. In equal control of her husband’s legacy in death and her reputation on earth, Colonna weeps and sighs her husband to eternal fame. Colonna’s clear command of her widowed voice, and the important role of the proemial sonnet, was reinforced by the print editions that shaped her works into a digestible, clearly ordered opera.15 From the first pirated edition of the Rime by Filippo Pirogallo in 1538, the proemial sonnet remained in pride of place despite numerous re-orderings in later editions, and it is her artful self-positioning in this sonnet that seems to have resonated more than any other with the women under consideration in this chapter. Sapegno has also noted that it is with the new print editions that ‘the image of the poet began to evolve relatively independently from her poetic activity’.16 So too did Colonna’s identity as a widowed poet change after her death, from simple role model to the object of a competitively charged emulation.

New Colonnas Much has been written about Colonna’s influence on other women poets as both an amorous and a spiritual poet.17 Among her contemporaries, 14 Dante, Pur. 23.85–93 (Alighieri 1996–2011: II.386–7). On Forese Donati and his wife, see Alfie 2011, Diaz 2011 and Callegari 2015. 15 On the complex history of the amorose order, see especially Crivelli 2016 and Sapegno 2016. 16 Sapegno 2016, 142. 17 On Colonna’s wide influence on other women writers, including Marguerite de Navarre, Veronica Gambara, Laodamia Forteguerri, Laura Terracina and Isabella Morra, see especially

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Veronica Gambara—also a widowed aristocrat and skilled Petrarchist— was her closest interlocutor on the subject of widowhood; it was Gambara who commissioned the Corso commentary on Colonna’s work, effectively publicizing Colonna as the ideal widow poet despite her own poems on the same subject.18 She famously described Colonna in a sonnet exchange as ‘the unique glory of our era’, reinforcing her contemporary’s reputation as the greatest example of womanhood of the age.19 In her correspondence with Marguerite de Navarre, Colonna writes that all women need role models ‘on this long and difficult road of life’, in order to choose the proper path.20 It is helpful to keep Gambara and Navarre in mind as primary interlocutors when examining how Battiferri, Matraini and Turina engage with Colonna’s reputation and poetry, each establishing a dialogue in verse based on emulation of the poet despite no hope of a return sonnet or letter.21 All three pick up, especially, on the richness of the proemial sonnet, providing the reader with variations on a theme and reminding us not only of Colonna’s influence, but of the breadth and potential of the innovation she offered as a model for later Petrarchists. It is most enlightening to look at the three sonnets in chronological order, which demonstrates how Colonna’s influence evolved from mid- to late-sixteenth century. Laura Battiferri, born in 1523, in addition to being the earliest, is the most celebrated and studied of the three poets under consideration in this chapter. Like Colonna, Battiferri is known for her highly cultivated image as Brundin 2001; Cox 2005a and Cox (ed.) 2013, passim; Rabitti 2000; Robin 2012; Lalli 2017. Shannon McHugh’s contribution to this volume points to the influence Colonna had on her most famous Petrarchist friend, Bembo, as well as on male Neapolitan writers and writers later in the Counter-Reformation. 18 See especially Rabitti 1992: 149–55; Cox 2005a: 19–22; Cox 2005a: 146–8. On Corso’s commentary, see the chapter by Humberto González Chávez in this volume. 19 Gambara’s 1532 sonnet ‘O de la nostra etade unica gloria’ and Colonna’s response, ‘Di nuovo il cielo de l’antica gloria’ were printed together in Colonna 1558 and in Domenichi (ed.) 1559. For a modern edition, see Cox (ed.) 2013: 273–4. Molly M. Martin points out that ‘Gambara’s sonnet … helped fortify Colonna’s “monumental” status as the female Apollo of the era’ (Introduction to Gambara 2014: 15). 20 See Cox 2016a: 473–4; see also Brundin 2001, especially 62. 21 The three women under consideration here were by no means the first instance of women being placed in clear competition with Colonna. Cox points to the conscious attempts following Colonna’s death to locate her rightful successor, with, notably, male poets consciously setting up other women poets as sure to equal or even ‘outdo’ her in rather audacious ways. Cox notes specifically the cases of Tullia d’Aragona (1510–56)—who is described by Benedetto Arrighi in her Rime (1547) as a glorious ‘sun’ to Colonna’s ‘pale predecessor “moon”’—and of Laura Terracina (1519–77), whom Francesco Ferosi described ‘as equal to the “lofty Vittoria”’ in her Rime seconde (1549). Cox 2008: 80–1.

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an illustrious poet, as the famous 1560 Bronzino portrait of her makes clear. In the painting, she faces left, her sharp features aligned in an unmistakably Dantean profile, holding a book opened to a page of Petrarch.22 Battiferri was attentive to her connections to the influential: a native of Urbino, she aligned herself with the powerful Grand Duchess of Florence, Eleonora de Toledo, through an important verse collection, Il primo libro dell’opere toscane (1560).23 Despite her aristocratic pretensions, Battiferri was illegitimate, and she was married twice to commoners, a far cry from Colonna’s illustrious marriage to the Spanish military leader d’Avalos. Battiferri wrote just nine widowhood poems, none of which were published, after the death of her first husband, the organist Vittorio Sereni, in 1549. She was more famously married the following year to Bartolomeo Ammannati.24 The early place of these widowhood sonnets in her poetic chronology is worth noting: they came at the beginning of her career, and it seems likely that they were an attempt at experimentation, crafting herself as a new Colonna, a young noble widowed poet with important friends. Her husband was even fortuitously named ‘Vittorio’, allowing her to pun on his name and Colonna’s at once.25 It is the first of the nine poems which begs the closest attention from Colonna scholars, due to its clear allusions to the proemial sonnet and the ways in which Battiferri plays with dissimulative language, vaunting her grief over her poetic merit: Non scrivo, alma mia stella, perch’io voglia o pensi alla gran luce tua infinita giunger punto di lume, ma m’invita amore, mi sprona mia sfrenata voglia. Ragion ognora a ragionar m’invoglia, di te, ch’or godi in ciel beata vita, dal vero oggetto tuo mai disunita, u’ morte o tempo non fia che ti rispoglia. 22 See Smith 1996 and Kirkham 1998 for readings of the portrait. On Battiferri’s social status, see Kirkham 2006. 23 See especially Kirkham 2006: 26 and Rabitti 2000: 488–91. 24 Kirkham 2006 brings these poems to light and offers an excellent analysis of their influence and innovation, 192–9. 25 On Colonna’s ‘fateful name’ and the tradition of puns deriving from it, see Cupperi 2007. Colonna plays on ‘Vittoria’ and ‘victory’ often herself, most famously in the poem ‘A le vittorie tue, mio lume eterno’ (A1: 6). See also Veronica Copello’s chapter in this volume.

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Così ponga omai fine al dolor mio l’alta felicità, la tua memoria, ch’ognor fa andar altier mio basso stile. Non è d’acquistar lode il mio disio, ma s’io parlo di te, alma gentile, avrò di morte e dello oblio vittoria.26 I do not write, my bountiful star, because I want to add a touch of shine to your infinite light, or think I can, but love invites me, my unbridled will spurs me. Reason ever makes me want to speak with reason of you, who now enjoy in heaven blessed life, never disjoined from your true object, where death or time will not be there to despoil you again. Thus may lofty felicity, your memory, whichever makes my lowly style go proud, now put an end to my sorrow. It is not my desire to acquire praise, but if I speak of you, noble soul, I shall have victory over death and oblivion.

The poem is a frank nod to Colonna’s ‘Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia’, though it begins not with the affirmative ‘I write in order to … ’ but instead with the negative ‘I do not write … ’, offering a defensive posture from the opening line. Addressed directly to her husband (‘alma mia stella’), Battiferri cleverly alters Colonna’s language, echoing her role model while twisting the words to craft a protestation rather than an explanation—she does not write to ‘add a touch of shine (‘giunger punto di lume’, echoing Colonna’s ‘non per giunger lume’). The reasoning remains the same as Colonna’s, only the wording inverted. Battiferri insists, like her poetic model, that she does not write mourning poems in order to advance her dead husband’s reputation, but because of unstoppable love and her own ‘unbridled will’. Evident in this sonnet, however, are some small signs of ambition that Colonna would not have admitted to. Indeed, Battiferri’s becomes a bolder poetic performance than that of her model overall, as she both imitates the rhymes of Colonna’s quatrains (the original ‘doglia / spoglia / invoglia / toglia’ transformed to ‘voglia / voglia / invoglia / rispoglia’) and builds on 26 Transcription and translation from Battiferri 2006: 193, slightly amended.

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them, demonstrating stylistic flair through her use of rima equivoca (‘voglia / voglia’) and inclusive rhyme (‘voglia / invoglia’). Battiferri asserts that her grief and her love’s memory elevate her lowly style; if she speaks of him, she says, she will have ‘vittoria’ over death and oblivion (with the obvious allusion to Colonna’s name).27 While this victory is largely psychic, it is a far more aggressive descriptor of emotional relief than Colonna’s choice of ‘sfogar’. She is not looking to expiate her feelings, but to conquer them. Even balder ambition is on display in the two poets in the pages that follow. Chiara Matraini was born in 1515 to a family of commoners in Lucca and died in 1604; her poems were published in two different versions, both under her direction, forty-two years apart, in 1555 and 1597.28 Matraini published a remarkably diverse array of texts over her long life, including an oration in praise of the art of war, printed in her 1555 Rime e prose, and her Dialoghi spirituali of 1602.29 Because of her social status, she operated in a less well-connected world than Colonna and Battiferri.30 She was married to Vincenzo Cantarini by 1530, widowed by 1542; it is rumoured that she engaged in a scandalous affair following her husband’s death with the married Bartolomeo Graziani, who was murdered somewhat mysteriously.31 In 1555 Matraini published her Rime e prose with the Lucchese publisher Busdraghi. Much of it is a canzoniere of widowed mourning poems, although the identity of the object of said mourning remains up for some debate. Critics have often believed the poems to be directed not to Cantarini but rather to Graziani; Cox has recently argued that wordplay on ‘Vincenzo’ in the opening sonnet points to her husband instead as the dedicatee of the poems.32 While this makes for a less salacious biography of the poet, it does make more sense when we consider how she allies herself with the chaste and ever-devoted widow Colonna. In her revised 1597 edition, Matraini includes a cento, a poem that is composed of lines from poems written by other poets, which lifts the first four full lines from Colonna’s ‘Occhi miei, oscurato è il vostro Sole’ (A1: 15). 27 The memoria-vittoria rhyme in Battiferri’s f inal tercet, and the allusion to writing as a victory over death echo the second quatrain of Veronica Gambara’s tribute sonnet to Colonna, ‘O de la nostra etade unica gloria’, discussed above. 28 See Matraini 2008, especially 1–10, for Matraini’s detailed biography. 29 See especially Milligan 2006 on her oration on the art of war, and McHugh 2014 on the Dialoghi spirituali. 30 Cox 2008: 90. 31 Matraini 2008: 5–6. She is described as the ‘scelerata vedova’ or ‘wicked widow’ in the 1547 Vita di Gherardo Sergiusti, published in Lucca, coincidentally, the same year as Colonna’s death. 32 Cox (ed.) 2013: 396.

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Another poem worthy of study for its Colonnesque attention to fame is Matraini’s ‘Alto mio sol, se l’anima beata’, in which she avows that if she could allow her mind to be enamoured of her sun’s rays, a new light would be born to the world, suggesting that she might receive reflected glory if only she could see her beloved Sun—indeed, following Colonna’s model, she uses Sole throughout.33 The most important sonnet by Matraini does not appear in either the 1555 or 1597 editions, but instead is available only in a manuscript in the Vatican library.34 In it we see, for the first time, a direct comparison to Colonna by a poet in her widowed verse. Quanto l’alta Colonna il suo gran sole avanzò in Ciel mentre che i santi carmi cantava in terra, e ne’ più saldi marmi l’opre di lui intagliava eterne e sole, tanto l’alto suo stile avanzar suole mio ingegno, onde non posso a tanto alzarmi. Però conviensi e la vettoria e l’arme rendere a lei, che ’l mondo onora e cole. Ella qui morta e in Ciel bella e viva merita sol la gloriosa palma E corona di lauro, edera, oliva; ma voi di ricca e preziosa salma meritate, e di fiamma ardente e viva ornate aver di me sempre mai l’alma.35 Just as the lofty Colonna advanced her great Sun in heaven as she sang her holy songs here on earth and sculpted his eternal, peerless deeds in the most lasting marble, so too does her lofty style advance my intellect: I cannot rise so high, and must give the victory and surrender my weapons to her whom the world honours and worships. She alone, dead on earth 33 See Cox (ed.) 2013: 149 for a discussion of Matraini’s Colonnesque cento, and Matraini 2008: 143 for a version of ‘Alto mio sol’. Rabitti points to the influence of Colonna on Matraini’s entire oeuvre, both her widowed verse and her late spiritual turn, Rabitti 1985. 34 MS Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 5225: xv; cited by Rabitti in the Introduction to Matraini 2007. Rabitti suggests the sonnet may have been written to mark Colonna’s death in 1547, although it is curious that it would not have made it into her 1555 edition in that case. Cristina Acucella persuasively suggests it was more likely written between the first and second edition of Matraini’s Rime. Acucella 2017: 8. 35 Transcription and translation from Cox (ed.) 2013: 150.

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and beautiful and living in heaven, merits the glorious palm and the laurel, ivy and olive wreath, but you deserve me to adorn your soul with a rich and precious body, and with live and ardent fire.

Here Matraini specifically namechecks Colonna as the ideal widow poet, weaving together both Colonna’s own language (‘il suo gran sole’) and the Artemisian comparison from Ariosto: she ‘sculpted’ his deeds in marble on earth while singing in order to advance his glory in heaven. She also borrows Colonna’s canny rhetorical strategy and insists that she cannot achieve her role model’s stylistic levels; conspicuously, she says little about the depths of her own grief. She lays poetic ‘victory’ at her role model’s feet, punning on Colonna’s f irst name as few can resist; unlike Battiferri, however, she aggrandises her verse by declaring that her own style is made better by Colonna’s influence. The poem ends somewhat def iantly, with a direct address to her beloved declaring that despite her inability to reach Colonna’s heights, her lover still deserves her own poetic labour, inferior though it may be. Yet eleven of the poem’s fourteen lines are devoted to Colonna; the poem’s dedicatee—be he Graziani or Cantarini—is effectively an afterthought, even as he is reassured of his worth. The true aim of the sonnet is not to memorialize her lover, but to compare herself to Colonna. In this particular poem, widowed verse changes, becoming less about the commemoration of the beloved, and more about direct stylistic and affective competition with Colonna herself. This focus on Colonna rather than the poet’s own dead beloved is repeated in the final poem to which I will draw our attention in this study, a madrigal by the Umbrian poet Francesca Turina. Turina was born in 1553, six years after Colonna’s death; like Matraini, she lived to an old age, dying in 1641.36 She was married in 1573, at the age of twenty, to Count Giulio Bufalini, who was seventy. The Count died nine years later, leaving her with young children; she spent the remaining fifty-seven years of her life a widow. In 1595, Turina published the first of her two books of verse, the Rime spirituali sopra i misterii del santissimo rosario, dedicating them to Pope Clement VIII (1536–1605, pontiff from 1592). 36 Turina is receiving greater attention of late, notably with the excellent essays by Paolo Bà, Adriana Chemello, Maria Serena Sapegno and others in Butcher (ed.) 2018. On Turina’s life and works, see Bà 2005; Costa-Zalessow’s introduction to Turina 2009; Cox 2011, most saliently 80–4; the relevant poems in Cox (ed.) 2013; and the second chapter of McHugh 2022 (forthcoming). See also Giusti 2012 on Turina’s self-presentation of her widowhood.

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In the introductory letter to the collection, Turina presents herself to the pope as a poor ‘vedovetta’, the diminutive form emphasizing her as an abject figure in dire need of patronage and material assistance for herself and her children. She states that she offers Clement the poem cycle, a collection of spiritual poems divided into three parts—the Primo misterio del santissimo Rosario detto Gaudioso, Secondo misterio del santissimo Rosario detto Doloroso and Terzo ed ultimo misterio del santissimo Rosario detto Glorioso—in the hope that he will take pity on her. She reminds him that, as a woman, she cannot protect her land like a man would, ‘with his labour and blood’, but only ‘with the sincerity of my feelings, and with devotion in ink’.37 Following the last poem of the spirituali, which heaps glorifying praise on Clement VIII, Turina elaborates on her professed feminine vulnerability by showcasing her widowed grief through twenty-four additional poems lamenting the loss of her husband, entitled Della medesima in morte de l’illustrissimo Signor Giulio Bufalini suo consorte. It is a remarkable cycle of rime vedovili, clearly informed by Colonna’s widowed verse. Indeed, the final poem of the collection is a madrigal addressed to Colonna, which closely mimics ‘Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia’ and places her in direct affective competition with her predecessor. Porti, Vittoria, il vanto di stil, non di dolore, ché de la vena onde si strugge il core l’arte ho minor, ma non minore il pianto. Tu chiamasti Parnaso; e ti rispose, al suon di dotte, angeliche parole, con rime alte e famose, adornandone il ciel del tuo bel Sole. Misera, io piango, e male Pindo ascolta il mio dire semplice e frale; ch’io crederei, s’egual fosse ’l mio stile a la pietade e al zelo, ornar anch’io d’un novo Sole il cielo.38

37 ‘con le fatiche e col sangue’, ‘con la sincerità dell’affetto, e con la devozione dell’inchiostro’. Turina 2005: 153. See Giusti 2012 for a discussion of Turina’s strategic use of her grief in the letter to the pope. 38 Translation Cox (ed.) 2013: 155.

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Vittoria, you carry the palm of style, not of sorrow, for in the vein that melts the heart, my art may be lesser, but my affliction is not less. You called Parnassus, and Parnassus responded to the sound of learned, angelic words, with sublime famous verses, adorning heaven with your fair Sun. Poor wretch that I am, I weep, and Pindus barely listens to my simple, frail voice. But, if my style were equal to my devotion and passion, I too would think to adorn the heavens with a new sun.

This madrigal—a poetic form rarely used by Colonna, and which came most fully into vogue after her death—directly challenges Colonna’s claim that she writes only to relieve her grief, and not with any great style. Turina flips the script, asserting that Colonna is, in fact, the mistress of poetic style, but not of grief; Turina’s feelings of widowed woe are far greater. Just below the surface of the poem is Turina’s winking enticement to her own readers to ‘collude’ with her, as Colonna urged her own readers to—her style, she implies, may overtake Colonna’s, as well as her grief. Further to the message of the madrigal itself, its positioning and the overall intention of this published work is crucial for understanding its importance and its sophisticated innovation. Whereas Battiferri’s ‘Non scrivo, alma mia stella, perch’io voglia’ and Matraini’s ‘Quanto l’alta Colonna il suo gran sole’ circulated only in manuscript, Turina’s madrigal concludes a remarkable publication with multiple aims: to secure patronage from the pope, demonstrate her acumen as spiritual poet, and showcase the authenticity of her personal grief in verse. The publication as a whole is a bold presentation of herself as a new Colonna for her age. She inverts the traditional order of Colonna’s rime amorose followed by rime spirituali as they were so often published, beginning instead with rime spirituali and then moving to her widowed verse; rather than initiate her own rime vedovili as Colonna does, with a poem declaring that her woe is greater than her style, she ends with it; rather than address Vittoria in sonnet form, she chooses a madrigal. She offers herself as a new Colonna the pope can claim as his own, an even more devoted widow poet than the legendary Vittoria, her style as fresh as her grief. Unlike Battiferri and Matraini, Turina chose Colonna not as a way to explore her grief in a handful of widowhood poems, but rather as a jumping off point for a lifelong self-fashioning as grieving widow, which she continued for forty more years. While Colonna shifted her poetic project away from widowhood in at least the last decade of her life, Turina dug in on the psychic, physical and economic hardships widowhood brought to her—while strengthening a personal connection to her role model as widow

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and poet.39 After a period in Rome working as a tutor for the young daughters of Colonna’s relatives, Filippo Colonna and Lucrezia Tomacelli Colonna, she returned to her Umbrian home in 1622, but she remained determined to keep ties to the Colonna family, valuable to her both as patrons, and as a tangible connection to her literary role model. 40 The year 1628 saw a new publication, her Rime, an autobiographical collection of verse she claims to have written ‘only for the lightening of my passions’ (solamente per alleggerimento delle passioni). The volume is dedicated to one of her former charges, Anna Colonna, who the previous year had married Taddeo Barberini, a nephew of Pope Urban VIII. Turina dedicates numerous poems in the volume to members of the Colonna family, including Vittoria Colonna’s namesake, Vittoria, Anna’s sister. She praises the girl for breathing life back in to the name, declaring that she will be a ‘new’, magnificent Vittoria for her age. 41 She lauds the ‘original’ Vittoria as ‘that lofty Colonna, who with her wise and resounding verses made herself immortal and gave honour to all women’. 42 Here there is no mention at all of d’Avalos, of Bufalini, or of a shared grief over the loss of a husband—only of the fact that the poet rendered herself immortal, and helped bring honour to other women—in some ways echoing Gambara’s urging in 1532 that other women build a monument to honour Colonna. For the widowed Turina, Colonna’s true exemplarity lies not in what she did for her husband, but in what she did for herself and for the widowed poets who came after, all of whom were able to join in the long tradition of Italian literary widowhood thanks to Colonna’s example. It bears reflecting, in conclusion, on what these poems can tell us about the way in which women writers of the early modern period may have perceived their role models—not just as poets to emulate, but poets to surpass. One thing that is evident from the poems under consideration in this chapter, especially Turina’s madrigal, is a desire to eclipse Colonna—to beat her at her own game. This evidence is markedly different than the way in which 39 A letter by Carlo Gualteruzzi suggests that Colonna had turned to spiritual verse by 1536, before her first poems were published in 1538. Moroni 1984: 65. 40 For Turina’s relationship with the Colonna family, see Torrioli 1940: 18, 26, 27, as well as Bà 2005: 143–4. 41 The younger Vittoria Colonna (1610–75) would prove herself an impressive Colonna in her own right, as the famous Carmelite Chiara Maria della Passione, who became prioress of the convent of Regina Coeli in Trastevere after its founding by her sister Anna in 1654. See Costa-Zalessow 2013. 42 ‘quella alta Colonna / che coi suoi dotti e sì sonori carmi / immortalossi e onor rese a ogni donna’. Turina 2010: 151.

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Colonna herself engaged with women writers contemporary to her. It also goes against what has been commonly assumed in scholarship about the way women writers generally engaged with their forebears. This is most famously identified in the 1979 classic of feminist literary criticism, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, which argues that Harold Bloom’s famous theory of the ‘anxiety of influence’, in which the (male) author must ‘engage in heroic warfare’ with his ‘precursor’ is ‘intensely (even exclusively) male, and necessarily patriarchal’. 43 Madwoman distinguishes the anxieties of the woman writer from those of the man, declaring that a woman does not ‘fit in’ within the male literary canon Bloom identifies, and its resulting Oedipal anxieties. Women writers, Gilbert and Gubar argue, do not view themselves as in competition with their foremothers, because they have no foremothers to be in competition with. Forty years after the publication of Gilbert and Gubar’s seminal text the study of women writers, from the women of nineteenth-century England to those of sixteenth-century Italy, is in a very different place. The literary landscape is now flooded with foremothers, and we can see that women writers did not always play entirely ‘nice’ with their role models—the anxiety of Colonna’s influence is palpable in the poems of her descendants. Thanks to the extraordinary body of scholarship that now comprises the field of ‘Colonna Studies’, it is clear that Colonna not only provided an early model for women Petrarchists to imitate: she was a literary ‘mother’ many of them hoped to outdo.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion Innovation

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020) ed. S. McHugh and A. Wainwright. Newark, DE.

Primary works Alighieri, D. (1996–2011). The Divine Comedy, tr. R.M. Durling, ed. R.M. Durling and R.L. Martinez. New York. Ariosto, L. (1964) Orlando furioso, ed. E. Sanguineti and M. Turchi. Milan. 43 See Gilbert and Gubar 1978: especially 47–8, and Bloom 1973.

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––– (1974) Orlando Furioso, tr. G. Waldman. Oxford and New York. Battiferri, L. (2006) Laura Battiferra and Her Literary Circle, ed. and tr. V. Kirkham. Chicago. Colonna, V. (1558) Tutte le rime … con l’espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso. Venice. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. Domenichi, L. (ed.) (1559) Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime et virtuosissime donne. Lucca. Gambara, V. (2014) Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. M. Martin and P. Ugolini. Toronto. Matraini, C. (2008) Selected Poetry and Prose: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. E. MacLachlan with an introduction by G. Rabitti. Chicago. Turina, F. (2005) Rime spirituali sopra i misteri del santissimo rosario, ed. P. Bà, Letteratura italiana antica 6: 153–220. ––– (2009) Autobiographical Poems: A Bilingual Edition, ed. N. Costa-Zalessow, tr. J. Borrell with N. Costa-Zalessow. New York. ––– (2010) Le rime, ed. P. Bà, Letteratura italiana antica 11: 141–276.

Secondary works Acucella, C. (2017) ‘Cambi di progetto: Vittoria Colonna, modello e antimodello nei proemi di Chiara Matraini’, in L’Italianistica oggi: ricerca e didattica, ed. B. Alfonzetti, T. Cancro, V. Di Iasio and E. Pietrobon. Rome: 1–9. Alfie, F. (2011) Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati: The Reprehension of Vice. Toronto. Ascoli, A. R. (2011) A Local Habitation and a Name: Imagining Histories in the Italian Renaissance. New York. Bà, P. (2005) ‘Le Rime spirituali di Francesca Turina Bufalini’, Letteratura italiana antica 6: 147–52. Bloom, H. (1997) The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd edn. Oxford. Brundin, A. (2001) ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary’, The Modern Language Review 96: 61–81. ––– (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Farnham. Butcher, J. (ed.) (2018) Francesca Turini Bufalini e la ‘letteratura di genere’. Città di Castello. Callegari, D. (2015) ‘Grey partridge and middle-aged mutton: the social value of food in the tenzone with Forese Donati’, Dante Studies 133: 177–90. Clark, K. (2007) ‘Purgatory, punishment, and the discourse of holy widowhood in the high and later Middle Ages’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 16/2: 169–203. Costa-Zalessow, N. (2013) ‘Francesca Turina Bufalini’s encomiastic poems for Lucrezia Tomacelli Colonna’, Italica 90/3: 365–77.

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Cox, V. (2005a) ‘Women writers and the canon in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak History: Women Writers and Canons in Early Modern England, France, and Italy, ed. P. J. Benson and V. Kirkham. Ann Arbor: 14–31. ––– (2008) Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore. ––– (2011) The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. ––– (2020) ‘Re-thinking Counter-Reformation literature’, in Innovation: 15–55. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Crivelli, T. (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. Cupperi, W. (2007) ‘Il nome fatale di Vittoria: note su due medaglie della Marchesa di Pescara’, in Lo sguardo archeologico: i normalisti per Paul Zanker, ed. F. De Angelis. Pisa: 239–53. Diaz, S. (2011) ‘Dietro a lo sposo, sì la sposa piace’: Marriage in Dante’s Commedia. PhD dissertation, New York University. Gilbert, S. and S. Gubar (2000) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 2nd ed. New Haven. Giusti, F. (2012) ‘Le circostanze del dolore: Il canzoniere di fine cinquecento di Francesca Turini Bufalini’, Rinascimento 52: 251–90. Goethals, J. (2014) ‘The flowers of Italian literature: language, imitation and gender debates in Paolo Giovio’s Dialogus de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus’, Renaissance Studies 29/5: 749–71. Kirkham, V. (1998) ‘Dante’s phantom, Petrarch’s specter: Bronzino’s portrait of the poet Laura Battiferra’, Visibile parlare: Dante and the Art of the Italian Renaissance, ed. D. Parker, Lectura Dantis 22–3: 63–139. ––– (2006) Introduction to Battiferri 2006. Lalli, R. (2017) ‘In limine. La lirica femminile del Cinquecento tra paratesto e stampa (1539–1600)’, La lirica in Italia dale origini al Rinascimento, ed. L. Geri and M. Grimaldi. Rome: 191–210. McHugh, S. (2013) ‘Rethinking Vittoria Colonna: gender and desire in the rime amorose’, The Italianist 33/3: 345–60. ––– (2014) ‘A guided tour of heaven and hell: the otherworldly journey in Chiara Matraini and Lucrezia Marinella’, Early Modern Women 9/1: 25–46. ––– (2022) Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy. Amsterdam (forthcoming). Milligan, G. (2010) ‘Proving masculinity before women: Laura Terracina and Chiara Matraini writing on warfare’, in The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain, ed. G. Milligan and J. Tylus. Toronto: 185–212.

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Moroni, O. (1984) Carlo Gualteruzzi (1500–1577) e i corrispondenti. Vatican City. Quondam, A. (2020) Foreword to Innovation: xi–xxx. Rabitti, G. (1985) ‘Inediti vaticani di Chiara Matraini’, in Studi di filologia e critica offerti dagli allievi a Lanfranco Caretti, 2 vols. Rome: I.225–50. ––– (1992) ‘Vittoria Colonna, Bembo e Firenze: un caso di ricezione e qualche postilla’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 127–55. ––– (2000) ‘Vittoria Colonna as role model for Cinquecento women poets’, in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. S. Wood. Cambridge: 478–97. Robin, D. (2012) ‘The breasts of Vittoria Colonna’, California Italian Studies 3/1: 1–15. Sapegno, M. S. (2003) ‘La costruzione di un Io lirico al femminile nella poesia di Vittoria Colonna’, Versants 46: 15–37. ––– (2016) ‘The Rime: a textual conundrum?’, in Companion: 140–94. Smith, G. (1996) ‘Bronzino’s “Portrait of Laura Battiferri”’, Notes in the History of Art 15/4: 30–8. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Torrioli, I. (1940) ‘Francesca Turina Bufalina e la società colta tifernate nel sec XVI’, L’Alta Valle del Tevere 8: 1–36.

About the author Anna Wainwright is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is co-editor of Innovation in the Italian CounterReformation (2020), Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide (2022) and The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden (2022), and is currently completing her first monograph, Widow City: Gender, Politics and Community in the Italian Renaissance.

5.

The Epistolary Vittoria* Maria Serena Sapegno Abstract To fully understand the importance of epistolary exchange and epistolarity in Vittoria Colonna’s thought and writings, it is necessary to go beyond the conventional categories handed down to us by the critical tradition. Within the limits of what may be achieved in the absence of a complete critical edition, we need both to examine the complex networks of relationships within which Colonna moved in her lifetime, and also to investigate the profound connections between her poetic compositions, her epistolary writing and her religious reflections, all pervaded by a similar dialogic impulse. Keywords: Letters, letter collections, friendship, networks, epistolary exchange

Among the various ‘firsts’ that Vittoria Colonna achieved over the course of her life—in addition to that initial, fundamental one of being the first woman to see published an entire volume of Rime under her name—I would like to underline at least another four. These are well known, and they have been helpfully highlighted and analyzed by Adriana Chemello in the recent Brill Companion to Vittoria Colonna.1 It is around these four ‘firsts’ that I will structure this chapter. The first of the four is constituted by Colonna’s early terza rima ‘Pistola’ (Epistle), on the model of the Heroides (and also, naturally, Boccaccio’s Fiammetta). Written in 1512 (and printed in 1536), and addressed to Colonna’s distant husband, this poetic letter establishes a new and interesting model for women’s writing: one that lays claim to a powerful authorial subjectivity * 1

Translated by Virginia Cox. Chemello 2016.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch05

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and that critically examines the poet’s ‘abandonment’, expressing very clearly an alternative perspective on love and war.2 It seems that Colonna’s husband, Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos, wrote a poetic response to the ‘Pistola’, but we have only the faintest trace of this.3 The second ‘first’ of Colonna’s I would like to recall here is that of having been a part, from the very beginning, of that new phenomenon that began to assert itself from the 1540s, and which would have such an impact on the literary society of the age: the phenomenon of the ‘book of letters’. 4 Already in the volumes of Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi uomini, published from 1542 by Paolo Manuzio, the Marchioness of Pescara figures as the most consistent and the richest presence among the rare women whose letters find their way into these anthologies, offered as models for a practice of epistolary writing that is in the process of organizing itself as an autonomous genre. The third of Colonna’s ‘firsts’ is that she saw a commentary on her poetry published during her lifetime, written by Rinaldo Corso, an intimate of Veronica Gambara.5 This was printed first in 1542 and 1543, in an edition that contains only the spiritual poetry of the Marchesa, and then, much later, in 1558, with the complete collection of her poetry, as must have been the intention from the start. This was a commentary that, as we will see, had an important influence on the critical tradition. The fourth and final ‘first’ is constituted by the publication in 1544 of a little book entirely occupied by three letters from Vittoria to the younger Costanza d’Avalos, letters of a spiritual nature, indeed decidedly religious: the Litere della divina Vetoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara a la Duchessa de Amalfi sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Caterina e sopra de la activa di santa Madalena (Letters by the Divine Vittoria Colonna Marchioness of Pescara to the Duchess of Amalfi, on the Contemplative Life of Saint

2 On Colonna’s ‘Pistola’ (A2: 1; numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982) as model, see Chemello 1999. The text was first published in the appendix to Fabricio Luna’s Vocabulario, which also includes other texts of Colonna’s. On Luna, see Cirilli 2007. A bilingual edition of the poem is available in Cox (ed.) 2013, 77–82. 3 For evidence of an epistolary correspondence between Colonna and d’Avalos, see the Life of Vittoria Colonna by a pseudonymous sixteenth-century writer, ‘Filonico Alicarnasseo’, published in Colonna 1892. 4 Cfr. Quondam (ed.) 1981. 5 A precedent is offered by Piccolomini 1541, a lettura on a single sonnet by Laudomia Forteguerri, which may be considered the f irst academic commentary on a contemporary author and on a woman poet. See Faggioli 2018 for a comparison of Piccolomini’s and Corso’s commentaries, and the contribution by Humberto González Chávez in this volume for a discussion of the latter.

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Catherine and the Active Life of Saint [Mary] Magdalene).6 These make up the first printed collection of lettere spirituali, as Chemello observes.7 In a foundational contribution to the study of Colonna, itself in dialogue with Silvia Longhi,8 Carlo Vecce observed that, with the ‘Pistola’, Vittoria inaugurated an ‘epistolary formula’ (codice epistolare) for women’s poetic discourse, centring around the relation of io and tu (‘I’ and ‘Thou’), and, successively—given the prevalently posthumous character of Colonna’s love poetry—also the introduction of a third person, egli (‘He’). Vecce counterposes this to the Petrarchan model of io / voi / tu (‘I / You / Thou’). ‘Her poetry, therefore, continued to be a voice of absence, both in her verses on the death of her husband, and in her spiritual verse, which introduces the theme of the relationship with the Other, with a Spouse who is always and entirely unattainable’.9 It seems to me that a discussion of Colonna’s poetry may certainly start from there, but that it needs to go much further, following the path indicated by the series of firsts we have been looking at and ending with a much broader consideration of how an entire culture organized itself around what may be called an epistolary system. Perhaps this inquiry will also offer a means to revise that prejudice whereby the poetry of women limits itself to the ‘I’, the ‘Thou’, the ‘He’, without extending to the ‘You’ plural, the voi. In reality, after that distant origin represented by the ‘Pistola’, an original work, but influenced by the extraordinary model of the Heroides,10 and of Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, Colonna’s epistolarity changes character, as her letters themselves are the first to attest. We find her, indeed, at the centre of an intense epistolary exchange with the whole of elite Italian society. It is that same society that we see staged and speaking in the most emblematically significant dialogues of the period, such as Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua (On the Vernacular Language), or Castiglione’s Il libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier). 6 Colonna 1544. 7 Chemello 2016: 25. 8 Longhi 1989. 9 ‘la sua poesia cioè continuava ad essere una voce dell’assenza, sia nelle rime in morte del marito, sia nelle rime spirituali, che introducono il tema del rapporto con l’Altro, con uno Sposo che è sempre e totalmente inattingibile’. Vecce 1993: 232. 10 Adriana Chemello (1999: 7) remarks on this subject: ‘We can take the Heroides as being a kind of “grammar” of writing in a woman’s voice. A grammar that regulates the system of roles, of functions, of spaces and times, as well as the recurrence of representational and thematic topoi. The figures of epistolary writing, and feminine epistolary writing in particular, are all already present in this archetype’.

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Colonna practices different registers in her epistolary writing, given that she is writing to everyone about everything: politics, religion, family relationships, and, naturally, poetry.11 Some of her letters on this last subject are justly famous, as early examples of literary criticism avant la lettre, as Dionisotti remarked almost forty years ago.12 Besides this, she receives sonnets and sends them, not so much—or not necessarily—in response to poems received, but for the pleasure and especially the necessity of sharing. Many interlocutors in these poetic exchanges are the same as her correspondents in the letters, the poets and non-poets within her circles. Sometimes her poems are of mourning or farewell, often of celebration. These were precisely the years when the epistolary culture around the Marchioness was undergoing a profound change. Pietro Aretino, correspondent and admirer of Vittoria Colonna, published the first printed collection of letters in 1538. This was a genuine quantum leap. The dissemination in manuscript of collections of letters had already altered the original sense of these documents, transforming them into models. The passage of letter collections into print set the seal on this transformation. ‘The epistolary text was uprooted from its specific, contingent context, but, at the same time, as everyone was aware—the writers of letters, as well as their readers—that same text was destined to stake its claim as a model, and hence to generate new writings in its turn’.13 Printed letter collections carried out the task of codification and dissemination on a much larger scale than could happen with manuscript circulation. In doing so, they transformed the very nature of a social custom that was woven deep within the warp and weft of elite culture since long before the advent of print, and which continued as foundational afterwards, at least for those, like Vittoria Colonna, for whom epistolary communication served such diverse and important functions. As Brian Richardson has well observed, manuscript circulation continued to play an important role in Italy long after the introduction of printing, and thus constituted a parallel form of ‘publication’ of literary texts, especially in the vernacular.14 This happened for many reasons, some connected with 11 In an important contribution, Concetta Ranieri speaks of a genuine ‘poetic-literary project, which the Marchioness of Pescara carried through even on the religious plane’. Ranieri 2016: 155. 12 Dionisotti 2002 [1981]: 122. 13 ‘il testo epistolare veniva sradicato dalla sua contingenza specifica, ma era anche vero che nella coscienza di tutti, degli autori come dei lettori, quello stesso testo era destinato a proporsi come modello e come tale a incarnarsi in nuova scrittura’. Procaccioli 2016: 41. 14 Richardson 2009. See also now, specifically on women’s relationship with print and manuscript culture, Richardson 2020.

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the introduction of censorship. Most crucially, it served as a vital tool in constructing a community of individuals bound together by common values. Manuscript circulation guaranteed a form of personalized literary exchange, made up also of comments, suggestions and corrections. It also often acted as a medium for exchanging opinions on the writings of third persons. It can thus be imagined as a means of broadening and deepening social and courtly relationships, supplementing face-to-face interactions: a kind of virtual piazza, very lively and well frequented, long into the typographical era. Thus, a letter from Colonna to Lodovico Dolce (1536) sees her expressing an opinion of some of Dolce’s sonnets that she had received, which she judges to be ‘divine’; then she adds, ‘My very tardiness in replying will serve in this case to excuse me, because by this point many of our mutual friends will have written to you to say how much I have praised them’.15 The letter eloquently conveys the routineness and the frequency of exchanges of texts and opinions on texts, within what is, precisely, a community. The same may be said of Colonna’s well-known, long, and extremely interesting letter to Castiglione of September 1524, wholly centred on the Cortegiano, which she had read in manuscript, and containing not merely congratulations and praise, but also very detailed and expert comments, embracing content, as well as language and style: Ma che dirò io della proprietà delle parole … le facetie e burle son tanto accomodate e ben dette … ma di quella parte, che più me piace et obliga, che è le forsi debite laude, che date alla continentia e virtù delle donne, determino tacere; ma non tacerò già quello che più admiratione mi ha causato, che è che a me pare che chi scrive latino habbi una differentia con gli altri autori, simile ad uno artefice che lavora di oro … et il novo vostro volgare porta una maestà con seco sì rara, che non deve cedere a niuna opera latina.16 And what shall I say of the exact choice of words … The witticisms and jests are so well judged and well worded … Regarding that part which most pleases me, and for which I am most grateful—that is to say, the perhaps deserved praises you give to the continence and virtue of women—I am resolved to remain silent; but I shall not be silent about the quality in 15 ‘Giovarà pure la mia tardanza a discolparmi, perchè molti vostri et miei amici vi haveran scritto quanto io gli habbia lodati’. Colonna 1892: 125 (letter LXXIV, from Arpino, 15 December 1536). 16 Colonna 1892: 23–5 (letter XVIII, from Marino, 20 September 1524). Cfr. H. Sanson, 2016: 218–20.

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your work that struck me the most. It seems to me that those who write in Latin have an advantage over other writers, comparable to that of a craftsman who works in gold … , yet this new vernacular of yours carries with it such rare majesty that it has no reason to cede to any Latin work.

Letters thus serve as vehicles for the sending of manuscript texts, as a gift, or a request for an opinion,17 but it often happens that they then cross with other texts, so that it eventually becomes difficult to establish where one piece of writing ends, and the elaboration of another begins. Within Colonna’s rich epistolary collection,18 an interesting example is offered by one of the several letters that the Marchioness wrote to Giovan Maria Giberti in 1524. The letter records that Giberti has sent her three madrigals, almost certainly by Pietro Aretino, one in praise of her, and the other two in praise of Giberti himself. Despite the restrained and ceremonious character of the epistolary text in this case, the complex dynamic set in train by Aretino is very clear. His poetic gift to Giberti was intended as homage to the recipient, and perhaps also as a kind of apology for some act of insolence, using a triangulation with the Marchioness, who is placed in the position here both of literary critic and of mediator.19 It is, however, through two relationships in particular—both highly important in Colonna’s life, and for the cultural history of this period generally—that the complexity and significance of the epistolary dimension of which we are speaking here may be most clearly understood: Colonna’s relationships with Pietro Bembo and with Michelangelo. Where Bembo is concerned, it was Carlo Dionisotti who first called attention to the centrality of these two figures’ relationship. A centrality for both parties: although this was almost purely an epistolary relationship, it was very intense and decisive for both. The correspondence of greatest interest here (although the two had earlier contacts, connected especially with Colonna’s intercessions in favour of Bembo in several practical concerns) is that triggered by Bembo’s receipt of a collection of Vittoria’s poems, sent to him via Paolo Giovio. Bembo responded to this gift with a famous letter of 17 ‘Probably the most frequent object of scribal publication was the single poem, usually a sonnet, or a small number of poems, enclosed with a letter, or sent in the form of a letter, or incorporated within the body of the letter itself’. Richardson 2009: 27. 18 Ranieri notes that, despite a strong tradition of studies, and various advances made in the discovery and reordering of many letters, even today ‘the vastness and variety of [Colonna’s] network of correspondents, the problems with dating, and the very diverse array of different types of correspondence are daunting to anyone who attempts to work with and analyze her letters’. Ranieri 2016: 155. 19 Colonna 1892:15–16 (letter XII, from Marino, 26 May 1524).

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20 January 1530, in which he declares ‘how much I felt I should congratulate the present century, having seen in these past few days many sonnets of yours, written for the death of your husband, the Lord Marquis of Pescara … Among women in this art you excel far more than it would seem possible that Nature concedes to your sex’ (italics added).20 This was not just any moment in the history of Italian literature. Of course, it is necessary to consider Bembo’s debt of gratitude towards the Marchioness and her immense social prestige; and it should also be recognised that his compliment is somewhat hedged (‘among women’). Nonetheless, it is highly significant that this man who, at this particular moment, represented the recognized authority with regard to the new, vernacular poetry of the age, assigned a grade of excellence to Colonna’s poetry which he subsequently underlined further, in other letters to Giovio. The correspondence between Bembo and Colonna, incorporating exchanges of sonnets, continued for a while with the same go-between. One famous instance, already alluded to above, is the letter from the Marchioness to Giovio, dated to June 1530, in which she not only recognizes the superiority of Bembo over all other Petrarchist poets of the day but also gives a precise stylistic analysis of the qualities of his verse, which reveals a great technical awareness and theoretical finesse. What we have here, then, first and foremost, is a poetic exchange, which, in addition to a very considerable number of texts submitted for reciprocal reading and criticism (we cannot say for certain how many), also embraces six actual correspondence sonnets exchanged between the two.21 This relationship is partially attested in the 1535 printed edition of Bembo’s Rime. It is clear, at the same time, that this is an intellectual relationship at the highest level, certainly not one that can be dismissed as operating on a purely social and courtly level. It is a dialogue that incorporates an exchange of images, of portrait medals, intended to substitute for a muchdesired face-to-face meeting, and it, of course, also features exchanges of ideas regarding Ochino’s preaching, Bembo’s cardinalate, and their own and others’ poetry. To this relationship, an exclusively epistolary one, a mixture of prose and poetry, was thus entrusted a relationship of immense cultural significance, embracing reciprocal support and criticism, a sharing 20 ‘[Il detto M. Fl. (i.e. Flaminio Tomarozzo) vi potrà dire] quanto io mi sia rallegrato col nostro secolo, havendo veduto a questi giorni qui molti sonetti vostri, fatti per la morte del sig.or Marchese, vostro marito … tra le donne in quest’arte sete assai più eccellente che non pare possibile, che al vostro sesso concede dalla natura’. Colonna 1892: 61 (letter XL, from Bologna). 21 Those by Colonna are A1: 71, S1: 137, and E: 14, in Colonna 1982. For a bilingual edition of one of these exchanges, see Cox (ed.) 2013: 268–70. For Giovio’s letter, see Colonna 1892: 62-3 (no. XLI, 24 June 1530)’.

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of decisive choices of ideals, a full legitimization of Colonna’s poetry, and a series of actions by Colonna that had important consequences for Bembo’s life and social position. Colonna’s relationship with Michelangelo dates to the later years of her activity, beginning towards the end of the 1530s. This, too, was an important relationship on both sides, and it was also key for the critical tradition of Colonna’s poetry, given that the only clear evidence we have of Colonna’s authorial choices is a manuscript in the Vatican Library (Vat. Lat. 11539), which she sent to Michelangelo around 1539–40,22 which transmits a full 103 sonnets, in the original text and the original ordering. This manuscript is only one piece of evidence of the correspondence between the two: an intense exchange of poems, of religious reflections, of various portraits and artworks, which accompanied Colonna through the last years of her life and had a transformative effect on Michelangelo’s life. Only seven letters survive of the many that Colonna wrote to Michelangelo, along with other compositions in which the two poets entered into direct or indirect dialogue with one another. In the past thirty years, many scholars have examined this relationship from various angles:23 the rich letter exchanges, often incorporating poems, which reveal an intense and profound dialogue, made up of religious and theological reflections on the most controversial topics of the moment, from grace and the gift, to the role of the Cross and of the Virgin. Colonna and Michelangelo had the opportunity to meet together in person in Rome—meetings that we see portrayed by Francisco de Holanda in his Dialogues24—but primacy must be accorded to their epistolary exchange, to that writing, filled with deep questions, with grief and even with desperation, flowing from their letters into their poetry, as they responded to one another and sent one another meditations, requests, prayers.25 Michelangelo mentions a successive gift that Colonna made him of another forty poems—poems we know little about, although he speaks of them having already been printed (plausibly in the 1546 Valgrisi edition of the Rime spirituali). All this occured during a phase in which the life of the Marchioness had become more segregated and solitary. The cultural climate had become more complex, in a way that made her epistolary network less open. Her 22 According to Toscano 2017, thanks to evidence of letters exchanged between Lattanzio Tolomei and Francesco della Torre, 1539 may be identified as the date when the collection for Michelangelo was assembled. 23 For example, Vecce 1992; Campi 1996; D’Elia 2006; Copello 2017a; Maratsos 2017. 24 de Hollanda 1993; Forcellino 2009. 25 Vecce 1992.

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community of reference was by this point almost exclusively the so-called ‘evangelicals’, sympathetic to Reformist thought. Even within this group, the atmosphere was changing; controls were becoming more intrusive, and tensions were mounting. But an epistolary dimension and circulation in manuscript continued to characterize Colonna’s output, even as the circumstances changed. Around 1540, among the letters that the Marchioness wrote to Bernardino Ochino, a long-term correspondent, one is particularly significant, written in the form of a Meditazione sulla passione di Cristo, which was soon transformed into a short religious prose work, and began to circulate independently in manuscript, until it was eventually printed, in 1556, under the name, Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Cristo.26 As has already been noted, in 1544, three letters written by Vittoria Colonna to Costanza d’Avalos were transformed into a printed volume, in part because of the new interest in books of letters, and also on account of that public hunger for religious reflection which we can sense also when we look at the parallel story of the print history of Colonna’s Rime and the ever-increasing interest that publishers showed in spiritual verse. According to Maria Luisa Doglio, ‘a powerful shaping influence’ on Vittoria Colonna’s epistolary writing is the model of the letters of Catherine of Siena (printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1500); but also scriptural sources: the Epistles and Acts of the apostles, and the lives of the saints.27 The strong urge to teach and to shape through communication accompanies a tension towards religious transcendence, and produces a normative and exemplary text, with a rich rhetorical structure and highly figured language. A close look at the reflections that Vittoria sets out in those letters to her young relative (‘I intend that my letters, written so simply, give you great consolation’)28 reveals at once that the subject-matter is identical to that of Colonna’s spiritual verse. The same rhetorical figures occur and the same language. The implicit interlocutor, too, is identical. Questa mattina il mio più caro pensiero vedeva con l’occhio interno la Donna Nostra et del cielo con sommo affetto e sovrabbondante letitia abbracciare il suo Figliolo, et di purissima luce mi parve discernere mille lacci, che con nodi di ardentissima carità li legavano insieme … una 26 Carinci 2016. 27 ‘Un’influenza e un peso fortissimi’. Doglio 1993a: 20. 28 ‘Intendo che le mie littere così semplicemente scritte vi danno consolatione assai’. Colonna 1892: 295 (letter CLXIX, undated. The letter as a whole is at 295–8).

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istessa carne … Et perché le diede potestà di madre, amore di sposa, sicurtà di figlia.29 This morning, my dearest thoughts saw through my inner eye Our Lady embracing her Son with the strongest emotion and with overwhelming joy, and it seemed to me that I saw a thousand cords of the purest light that bound the two together with knots of fiercely burning charity … one same flesh … and so He gave her the power of a mother, the love of a spouse, and the security of a daughter.

Mary stands above all others because: … non potranno giunger a quella che, nella mente, nel ventre, con l’interno e corporeo occhio lo vide e vede continuo … non bisogna molte ragioni a mostrare che è più essere una medesima carne che un vicino spirito … nutrendo l’Auttor d’ogni vita, era internamente nodrita da lui … quando il glorioso petto gli alimenti gli dava, il caldo de la divina bocca e l’affetto d’amore con che il sentiva non asciugava il santo latte o chiudeva la via d’onde nasceva!30 None can equal she who, in her mind, in her womb, with her inner and corporeal eye, saw Him and sees Him continually … What reasons are needed to show that it is greater to be of one flesh than merely a spirit, however near … As she nurtured the Author of all life, she was nurtured by Him inwardly … When her glorious breast gave him nutriment, the heat of His divine mouth and the feeling of love accompanying it did not dry her holy milk, nor close the path through which it reached Him!

The bodily component in this letter defines as unique and profoundly human the relationship between the Virgin and Christ. The same may be seen in the spiritual lyrics: ‘Vergine e madre, il tuo figlio sul petto / stringesti morto … Ma perché vera madre il partoristi’ (Virgin and mother, you clasped your dead son / upon your breast … but, because you bore Him as a human mother).31 The lyrics reflect similarly on Mary’s feeding of the Christ child (‘Donna, dal ciel gradita a tanto onore, / che il tuo seno il figliuol di Dio 29 Colonna 1892: 295–6. 30 Colonna 1892: 297–8. 31 Colonna 2005, 88–91 (poem 42; S1: 108 in Colonna 1982). The translation here and in successive notes is Abigail Brundin’s.

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nudriva, / or com’ei non t’ardeva e non t’apriva / con la divina bocca il petto e ’l core?’; ‘Lady, blessed by the heavens with such high honour / whose breast nourished the son of God himself, / how is it that his divine mouth did not scorch / or rend your breast and your heart?’),32 and on the multiplicity of personal ties that bind mother and son together (‘Immortal Dio nascosto in mortal velo / l’adorasti Signor, figlio il nudristi, / l’amasti sposo e l’onorasti padre’; ‘Immortal God, hidden in a mortal veil, / you worshiped him as Lord, nurtured him as son, / loved him as husband, and honoured him as father’).33 Nothing could confirm more strongly the extreme closeness within Colonna’s writings between poetic creativity and the epistolary dimension.

The manuscript and print tradition That epistolary dimension of Colonna’s writings, in all its complexity, has not yet received the attention it merits, despite the fact that, since the nineteenth century, the publication of a decent part of the Marchioness’s letters has allowed us to place her literary activity within a broader context. In recent decades, new letters have been discovered and studies of Colonna have multiplied, with particular attention being focused on the important area of her religious and theological reflections.34 The first critical edition of her work also appeared in 1982, edited by Alan Bullock, and, for all its flaws, this had the merit of opening up a wide debate. In Bullock’s controversial and much-debated ordering of Colonna’s poetry, there is a section entitled ‘Rime epistolari’, in which we find thirty-two compositions, thirty-one sonnets and an octave. The category seems arbitrary, in that we do not find in it, for example, the famous ‘Pistola’ of 1512 to her husband Ferrante. If we look back over the tradition of the Rime, in manuscript and print, even on a brief survey with no pretensions to comprehensiveness, certain things immediately claim our attention. The oldest manuscripts of Colonna’s 32 Colonna 2005, 96–7 (poem 51; S1: 103 in Colonna 1982). 33 Colonna 2005, 132–3 (poem 95; S1: 100 in Colona 1982). Marian poems in the manuscript to Michelangelo, edited in Colonna 2005 and Colonna 2020, are nos. 42, 43, 44, 51, 52, 53, 95. 34 ‘Up to the present day (and it is necessary to be precise about timing, since in cases of this kind, the identification of a textual corpus is inevitably a work in progress), Colonna’s letter collection is made up of 264 letters: letters that have disappeared over the years, purloined by collectors, and then sold at auction; letters refound on the other side of the world; letters that have changed library location and classmark; fake letters and letters that never existed’. Copello 2019a: 152. For an overview of Colonna’s autograph letters, see Ranieri 2014: 111–13 and Ranieri 2016.

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verse, prior to the print publications, attest to an interesting situation. In a manuscript in the Vatican, Chigi LIV 79, discovered by Fabio Carboni, and dated to 1536, out of 109 poems, 107 are Colonna’s and only two by her correspondents.35 Ten of the poems in this manuscript—where they are mingled with the others, some with the addressees named, others without—find their way into the epistolary section of Bullock’s edition. Another three poems which, in the Chigi manuscript, are marked explicitly as reply poems within poetic exchanges, are placed by Bullock in the section devoted to rime amorose, or love poetry. A similar argument can be made for the manuscript datable to 1531, which Tobia Toscano identified in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Naples (XIII G43), in which we find four of Bullock’s epistolary poems among the sixty-six in total in the manuscript, again, mingled with the other poems, without any distinguishing marks.36 The same may be said for the late manuscript in the Biblioteca Casanatense, in Rome (D VI 38, dating to 1560).37 Here, too, amid the other poems, we find occurrences of eight so-called epistolary sonnets. If we turn to the print tradition of Colonna’s poetry, we find, in the first two editions, of 1538 and 1539, a collection without any thematic divisions, containing quite a number of poems that will subsequently be labelled epistolary, and others that will be labelled as religious. As is well known, it is the third edition, of 1540, published by Niccolò d’Aristotele de’ Rossi, or Zoppino, that will begin the process of highlighting within the printed editions the presence of ‘spiritual sonnets’, reflecting market demand. The religious verses come henceforth to be given pride of place, with new and unpublished instances being added, until we come to the first collection, in 1546, made up entirely of Rime spirituali. Only in 1558 do we see the appearance of Rinaldo Corso’s commentary to Colonna’s collected verse (Tutte le rime), which was mentioned at the beginning of the present chapter. Here, everything changes. Corso’s operation was in line with a tendency that was already apparent in the choices of authors such as Chiara Matraini, Pietro Bembo, and Giovanni della Casa, all of whom 35 MS Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chigi LIV 79, dating to 1536; cfr. Carboni 2002. Epistolary verse in this manuscript includes E: 24, E: 25, E: 27, E: 5, E: 10, E: 3 (to the Marquis of Vasto), E: 19, E: 7 (to ‘signor Ascanio’), E: 26 (to Charles V), E: 30. Poems marked as risposte (responses) are: A1: 35, A1: 36, A1: 37, A1: 71 (to Bembo), A2: 24 (to the Marquis of Vasto). 36 The manuscript contains sixty-six compositions, including E: 24, E: 27, E: 9, E: 10. See Colonna 1998. 37 Carboni 2002. The manuscript contains forty-one texts, of which eight are found in the epistolary section of Colonna 1982, some with their addressees identified: E: 30, E: 19, E: 3, E: 8, E: 7, E: 10 and E: 27 (both to Giovanna d’Aragona); E: 9.

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moved towards a bipartite division of their canzonieri. Corso, lacking any indication of Colonna’s own preferences, totally reorganizes her corpus,38 making some very drastic choices. To the Dichiaratione fatta sopra la Seconda Parte (Declaration Made on the Second Part [of Colonna’s Verse]),39 which had already appeared in 1543 and which contained 38 rime spirituali, he adds in 1558 another 120 compositions, making up the ‘First Part’, distinguished from the second even from a typographical point of view. He entirely ignores the very rich corpus of rime spirituali that had appeared in print since 1543, presumably in order to preserve, between the first and the second part, the same numerical proportions that we see in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. The ordering of texts is entirely the fruit of Corso’s interpretive line, which organizes Colonna’s whole corpus around major thematic nuclei, within a powerfully unitary structure, which presents the first part as focused on earthly love (amor terreno), and the second on celestial love (amor celeste). Between these two parts, but typographically assimilated to the first, are twelve sonnets, defined as epistolary (and two canzoni relegated to this section for metrical reasons). Eleven of these twelve will be recognized as epistolary also by Bullock. 40 Within such a defined and prescriptive structure, the epistolary compositions have the appearance of being a useless incumbrance, a parenthesis that perhaps serves to illustrate the ‘terrestrial’ connections that the poet cultivated before turning her attention to higher things. Perhaps Corso felt that they should be excluded from the main ‘parts’ in order that the narrative trajectory of the poet’s soul should result more cleanly divided between earth and heaven: a solitary path. Yet both manuscripts and printed editions, right down to the republications of the nineteenth century, conspire near-unanimously to suggest a very different interpretation, sometimes going so far as to include texts by certain of Colonna’s interlocutors, in a way that reflects Colonna’s literary sociability—a more courtly reading of her persona, perhaps, but also certainly a more open one. Turning back now to examine the thirty-two texts published by Bullock in his ‘epistolary’ section, we can clearly register their relative insignificance, in this context, as well as in Corso’s. Indeed, the very definition of ‘epistolary’ verses is not very clear. Five of the thirty-two texts commemorate deaths, celebrating deceased figures dear to Colonna, like Jacopo Sannazaro and 38 Cinquini 1999. 39 Colonna 1543. 40 Colonna 1558. The ‘earthly love’ section comprises sonnets 1–105; epistolary sonnets 106–18; canzoni 119–20. The ‘celestial love’ section comprises 38 sonnets. The epistolary sonnets found in this collection are the following: E: 10, E: 26, E: 25, E: 2, E: 14, E: 5, E: 1, E: 13, E: 17, A1: 88, E: 18.

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Gasparo Contarini. Other poems are addressed to Charles V, or to the Pope, and they are very close to the letters Colonna addressed to these figures, which may be read in her letter collection: homages to them or exhortations to exert themselves in the name of world peace. One significant presence is of poems addressed to members of Colonna’s family circle, from Alfonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, and Giovanna d’Aragona, to Ascanio Colonna, and Pompeo Colonna. The same individuals recur in her letter collection, where they give a sense of her strong feeling of belonging to an important family, and an expression of that family’s honour. Finally, there are the texts that Colonna addressed to Veronica Gambara and to Pietro Bembo, whose positioning in Bullock’s anthology is hard to understand, considering that other, very similar sonnets of Colonna’s are found among the amorous or the spiritual lyrics. The result is that this group of poems falls into a kind of void of significance. They seem to have a purely decorative value, detached from any context. When they are considered from the perspective of epistolarity, however, they raise a very different question: why write letters and poems to the same people? Poetic address, as we have seen, can effect a passage from the private, or semi-private, context of letter exchange to a more public context (though still a controlled one, constituted by manuscript circulation). Eventually, letters themselves enter a broader, public context, when they come to be printed, but, for Vittoria Colonna, this was a different story, a story in which she had no agency. Leaving behind the epistolary section of Bullock’s edition, it is worth glancing also at the rime amorose (Bullock’s sections A1 and A2). The editor, seemingly fascinated, like Corso, by the notion of a bipartite division of the Rime, only partially justified by the textual tradition, has expelled from this category almost all the poems that had an addressee other than the beloved husband himself, with very rare exceptions, such as the sonnet Ahi quanto fu al mio Sol contrario il fato (A1: 71), which is addressed to Bembo, and two additional sonnets in the A1 section (numbers 69 and 75), as well as one in the A2 section (number 23), which are addressed to a collective subject, a ‘voi’ vaguely characterized as poets, as people interested in godly matters—in any case, witnesses of a life and a set of relationships lived within a familiar, close-knit social world. In A2, besides, we see included both the above-mentioned ‘Pistola’ and another sonnet ‘Felice donna’ (A2: 6), which may be assimilated entirely to Colonna’s epistolary writings in terms of its structure and language. Besides, we know from other sources that numbers 35 and 36, in section A1, are replying to sonnets by Tebaldeo, while number 37 of that same section

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can be conjectured to be a response to Francesco Berni. This listing of unmarked epistolary sonnets may not be comprehensive, but what I mainly wish to underline is the degree to which Colonna’s poetry, from its earliest documented moments, is open to a sociability more extensive than the present state of research allows us fully to appreciate. These reflections become even more complex and interesting if we turn to the Rime spirituali. In the first section of Bullock’s edition devoted to them, S1, already at number 7 there is a sonnet probably addressed to Pole, while numbers 90 and 97 are addressed to Michelangelo. Then from 136 onwards, an almost continuous series begins of sonnets addressed to Bembo (136–9 inclusive); to Federico Fregoso (140 and 163; we also encounter a sonnet to Fregoso in Bullock’s epistolary section); to Pole (141–2); and to Michelangelo again (152, 166, and 170). If the community constructed through this epistolary network seems limited in numbers, it is true, as well, that the names belong to a very close group, made up of individuals who were all key points of reference for Colonna and who shared her views. The poems are all concentrated on the great themes of the religious and theological debate of the time: a reflection that assumed its sense and its power only through a constant process of dialogue and exchange. But, in truth, this epistolary dialogue of Colonna’s may be extended further, if we look at a very compact nucleus of compositions among the rime spirituali, which seems to remain intact for the most part, in terms of general design, at least, in the Vaticano Latino 11539 (for Michelangelo), and in the Valgrisi edition of Colonna’s religious verse published in 1546. It is a section that includes a group of sonnets dedicated to the Virgin, from S1: 100 to S1: 110 (present both in the 1546 print edition and in the Vatican manuscript, though with some changes to the ordering), followed by an uninterrupted series, running from 111 to 132, of sonnets addressed to the most significant figures of the Bible and of Christian devotion: from Noah, Simeon, Peter, Andrew and Thomas, passing through Stephen, Lawrence, and Mary Magdalene, to Catherine, Francis, Ignatius and Benedict, before ending up with the archangels Gabriel and Michael. Here, too, is a community, called on in the first person to testify to their faith and invested with the task of representing that copresence of human and divine nature, that closeness to others on the path to salvation, that turning of ‘your Muse towards the truth’ to which Colonna invites Bembo precisely in these verses. 41 41 ‘Deh! rivolgete ancor la musa al vero’. Colonna 2005: 134–5 (S1: 137)

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It appears to me that the epistolary dimension of Vittoria Colonna seamlessly comprehends all these aspects. If she can write, and wants to write, letters and poems to the pope and the emperor, and to the greatest artists and intellectuals of the day, it is in part because of her belief in the great power of words, feeling as she does, part of a community. Hers is a community that starts with a close, domestic model, and then becomes ever more religious and ideal: a community founded on writing and on epistolary exchange. Within this perspective, it is not difficult to understand her relative indifference to forms of circulation of her texts that depend on a print economy over which she had no control. This helps clarify, as well, her strange role as a protagonist malgré soi of a truly epochal transition, which sees her constantly invoked and placed on a kind of pedestal, from which she cannot step down, yet whose elevation she cannot truly appreciate—hence, the sheer number of ‘firsts’ we can chalk up to her, as discussed at the beginning of this study.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion DBI

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome.

Manuscripts Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi LIV 79. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 11539.

Primary works Colonna, V. (1543) Dichiarazione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della divina Vittoria Collonna [sic], ed. R. Corso. Bologna. ––– (1544) Litere della divina Vetoria Colonna Marchesana di Pescara a la Duchessa de Amalfi sopra la vita contemplativa di santa Caterina e sopra de la activa di santa Madalena. Venice. ––– (1558) Tutte le rime … con l’espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso. Venice. ––– (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin.

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––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (1998) Sonetti in morte di Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos Marchese di Pescara (edizione del ms. XIII. G 43 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli), ed. T. R. Toscano. Milan. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. ––– (2020) La raccolta di rime per Michelangelo, ed. V. Copello. Florence. de Hollanda, F. (1993) Dialoghi di Roma, ed. F. Biscetti. Rome. Piccolomini, A. (1541) Lettura del S. Alessandro Piccolomini infiammato fatta nell’Accademia degli Infiammati. Bologna.

Secondary works Campi, E. (1996) ‘“Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa”. Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e Bernardino Ochino’, in Dall’Accademia neoplatonica fiorentina alla riforma. Florence: 67–135. Carboni, F. (2002), ‘La prima raccolta lirica datata di Vittoria Colonna’, Aevum 76: 681–707. Carinci, E. 2016, ‘Religious prose writings’, in Companion: 399–432. Chemello, A. (1999) ‘Il codice epistolare femminile. Lettere, “Libri di lettere” e letterate nel Cinquecento’, in Per lettera. La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia secoli XV-XVII, ed. G. Zarri. Rome: 3-42. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna’s epistolary works’, in Companion: 11–38. Cinquini, C. (1999) ‘Rinaldo Corso editore e commentatore delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Aevum 73: 669–96. Cirilli, F. (2007) ‘Luna, Fabricio’, in DBI 66. Copello, V. (2017a) ‘Il dialogo poetico tra Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna’, Italian Studies 62/3: 271–81. ––– (2019a) ‘Aggiornamenti sul carteggio di Vittoria Colonna. Parte I’, Nuova rivista di letteratura italiana, 22/1: 151–81. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. D’Elia, U. R. (2006) ‘Drawing Christ’s blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59: 90–129. Dionisotti, C. (2002) ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’ (1981), in Scritti sul Bembo, ed. C. Vela. Turin: 115–40. Doglio, M. L. (1993a) Lettera e donna. Scrittura epistolare al femminile tra Quattro e Cinquecento. Rome. Faggioli, S. (2018) ‘The first commentaries on women poets: Alessandro Piccolomini and Rinaldo Corso critique Laudomia Forteguerri and Vittoria Colonna’, in Women and the Canon, ed. M. Arriaga Florez and S. Santuosso. Seville: 19–32.

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Forcellino, M. (2009) Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e gli ‘spirituali’. Religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni Quaranta. Rome. Longhi, S. (1989) ‘Lettere a Ippolito e a Teseo: la voce femminile nell’elegia’ in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell’Italia settentrionale, ed. C. Bozzettii, P. Gibellini and E. Sandal. Florence: 385–98. Maratsos, J. (2017) ‘Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the afterlife of intimacy’, The Art Bulletin 99: 69–101. Procaccioli, P. (2016) ‘Il tempo della lettera. Aretino e le sue date: vere o false, presenti, assenti, presunte’, in Per uno studio delle corrispondenze letterarie di età moderna, ed. C. Carminati, P. Procaccioli, E. Russo, and C. Viola. Verona: 29–44. Quondam, A. (ed.) (1981) Le ‘carte messaggiere’. Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento. Rome. Ranieri, C. (2014) ‘Vittoria Colonna’, in Autografi dei letterati italiani. Il Cinquecento, ed. M. Motolese, P. Procaccioli and E. Russo, vol. 2. Rome: 111–13. ––– (2016) ‘“Delle cose de dio se delettava”. Le lettere di Vittoria Colonna tra meditazione religiosa e riflessione letteraria’, in Scrivere lettere nel Cinquecento. Corrispondenza in prosa e in versi, ed. L. Fortini, G. Izzi and C. Ranieri. Rome: 155–71. Richardson, B. (2009) Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge. ––– (2020) Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge. Sanson, H. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and language’ in Companion: 195–233. Toscano, T. R. (2017) ‘Per la datazione del manoscritto dei sonetti di Vittoria Colonna per Michelangelo Buonarroti’, Critica letteraria 45: 211–37. Vecce, C. (1992) ‘Petrarca, Vittoria, Michelangelo. Note di commento a testi e varianti di Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 101–25. ––– (1993) ‘Vittoria Colonna: il codice epistolare della poesia femminile’, Critica letteraria 78: 3–34.

About the author Maria Serena Sapegno is Professor of Italian Literature at La Sapienza in Rome. Recent publications include Figlie del Padre. Passione e autorità nella letteratura occidentale (2018) and Thematic Criticism from a Different Point of View (2020). In 2016, she coedited the Companion to Vittoria Colonna and edited Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna.

6. ‘Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, Victoria pendet’: A Forgotten Spiritual Epigram by Vittoria Colonna* Veronica Copello

Abstract On 27 November 1537, the Ferrarese humanist Daniele Fini sent a Latin epigram to Vittoria Colonna, at that time residing in Ferrara. She responded a few months later with an epigram of her own, a poem that has been all but neglected in the scholarship. This essay aims to verify Colonna’s authorship of the epigram through analysis of the manuscript against the historical details of the author’s life and travels, as well as a comparison with the lexicon and themes of her vernacular rime spirituali. Keywords: spiritual poems, Ferrara, Renaissance Latin poems, Reformation in Italy

A 221-page quarto manuscript on paper in the Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea in Ferrara (Cl. 1, 437) contains autograph writings by the Ferrarese humanist Daniele Fini (1460–c. 1550).1 Of particular interest is an epigram of five elegiac couplets at 208r, dated in the margin to 27 November 1537, authored by Fini and addressed ‘to the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno’. Daniel Finus ad Divam Victoriam Aterninam Ex te nomen habes victo Victoria mundo: conveniens aliud non tibi nomen erat. * Translated by Shannon McHugh. 1 Cf. Antonelli 1884. On Fini, see Petrocchi 1961: 65–6; Pasquazi 1966: xxi–xxxii; Pasquazi 1994: 113–21; Pistilli 1997.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch06

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Illud ab effectu tibi congruit; indidit illud en tibi, venturi praescia facta, parens. Illecebras et opes et mundi commoda calcas; quae tibi nunc vilis regia vestis erat nunc ieiuna factos Davidis, Christique libellos dextera, quae sceptrum ferre solebat, habet. Si mundi es νίκη, quae sunt tibi praemia pugnae? Mox mihi: ‘Post cinerea’, inquis, ‘Olympus erit’.2 Daniele Fini to the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno You take your name from yourself, Vittoria, because you are victorious over the world: no other name was fitting for you. That name befits you owing to your accomplishments; your mother, prescient of the future, bestowed it upon you. You disdain worldly enticements, riches and luxuries; you who once donned the robes of a queen now assume a humble habit. Your right hand, which once held a sceptre, now—thin from fasting—takes up the deeds of David and the books of Christ. If you are victor over the world, what rewards do you receive for your struggle? Straightaway you say to me: ‘After death comes Olympus’.

The identif ication of this ‘Victoriam Aterninam’ with Vittoria Colonna is indisputable. First, the epithet Aternina derives from the Aterno river, which runs through Pescara. Throughout her life, Colonna referred to herself in writing as the ‘Marchioness of Pescara’ (Marchesa di Pescara), the title she acquired when she married Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos. The Aterno is linked with Colonna in but a single other (and somewhat unexpected) instance: the Annalium of the Capuchin Zaccario Boverio, who refers to the poet as ‘Vittoria Colonna of the Aterno, or the Marchioness of Pescara’ (Victoriam Columnam Aterni, seu Piscariae Marchionissam).3 But the use of river-based epithets was not uncommon in this period: in the Accademia dei Dubbiosi, Gaspara Stampa took the name ‘Anassilla’, from Anaxum, the Latin name for the Piave, the river that runs through Collalto. As for the honorific ‘Diva’, it was commonly applied to Colonna, attested for example in all the early editions of her poetry, entitled Rime de la Diva Vittoria Colonna or Rime de la Divina Vittoria Colonna (1538, 1539, 1540, 1542, 1546). Moreover, Colonna was in Ferrara in November of 2 The poem has been transcribed with modernised capitalization, accent marks and punctuation. 3 Boverio 1632: vol. I, ch. 103.

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1537, at precisely the moment when Fini was composing the epigram in question. Finally, there is the poem’s pun on Colonna’s first name. This play on words appears in numerous inscriptions and compositions for and about the poet, from a medal displaying Colonna in the guise of the goddess Victoria, or Nike, to numerous other compositions, as Walter Cupperi has illustrated. 4 To his catalogue of examples may be added (to name but a few): ‘But it is no miracle if he boasts such glory, since he has for a wife the unique Vittoria’ (ma miracol non è se ha tanta gloria, / poi c’ha per sposa l’unica Vittoria);5 ‘victor over the world and yourself’ (vincitrice del mondo e di voi stessa);6 ‘A certain Vittoria, and truly rare, over all that the world offers up to the senses’ (Certa Vittoria e veramente rara / di quanto il mondo a questi sensi dona);7 ‘victor over the world and yourself’ (from Berardino Rota’s eclogue entitled Nice, from the Greek νίκη, ‘victory’);8 ‘For even those ancient heroines … admit to themselves and to all that she is superior, so that not only is the name “Vittoria” fated … ’ (Hanc enim unam illae Heroides … ita sibi ac omnibus superiorem esse confitentur, ut non modo eam fatali Victoriae nomine … );9 and ‘Hence do I take refuge in you and your good will, and I implore you by your holy and fated name’ (Ad te igitur confugio numenque tuum, sanctumque ac fatale nome imploro).10 A lengthier example is an excerpt from a letter to Colonna by Pietro Aretino: Due cose non più vedute, né più comprese, ha visto e compreso il mondo: l’una fu l’invitto de l’animo del sommo vostro consorte: l’altra è l’invincibile de l’alta mente vostra, bontà de la quale vi si dona la palma; egli con tali forze vinse le battaglie de le genti, et voi con sì fatto valore vincete le guerre de i sensi … Ben fu augurio di beatitudine il dì che foste battezzata Vittoria. Ben fu fatale cotal nome, poiché vincendo, quasi in fatto d’arme, tutte le vanità mondane, vi ornate de le spoglie e dei trofei che s’acquistano ne le sconf itte date da la fermezza del ben fare e da la constanzia de la fede agli inganni terreni. Voi, non per iscemare il grado del gran marito vostro avete ritrovata la milizia spirituale … ma 4 Cupperi 2007; Cox 2016a: 479–88. 5 Martirano 1998: 84. 6 Rime 1545: 229 (Annibale Caro). 7 L. Beccadelli, lines 1–2; in MS Pal. 972/2 in Parma’s Biblioteca Palatina, datable to 1547, available in Scarpati 1987: 69. 8 Rota 1572: 26–9. 9 Giovio 1984: 314 (the Dialogus de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus). 10 Colonna 2015: 141.

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per mostrar che sì come egli pose in uso, per domare l’inespugnabile, ciò che mai seppero le scole di Marte, così voi ponete in opra, per soggiogar l’abisso, quel che si può ritrare dagli studi di Cristo … E perciò i dominatori d’ogni clima non portar mai diadema che splendesse come splende quello che folgora nel capo di colui che ha saputo sottometter se stesso.11 Two things nevermore seen nor grasped did the world then see and grasp: the one was your most supreme consort’s unconquerable spirit; the other is your high mind’s invincibility, thanks to which you merit the palm [of victory]. He with these forces won the battles of the people, and you with such accomplished valour win the wars of the senses … Surely it was a divine omen, the day that you were baptised Vittoria. Well was that name fated, since triumphing as if in battle over all worldly vanities, you ornament yourself with the spoils and trophies acquired through the steadfastness of doing good and the constancy of faith in the face of earthly deceptions. Not to diminish the rank of your great husband have you brought forth the spiritual army … but rather to show that—just as he put to use that which the schools of Mars never knew in order to tame the unconquerable—so you put to work that which one can draw out from studying Christ in order to subjugate the abyss … And because of this, never was there a commander in any corner of the globe who wore a diadem that sparkled such as the one that flashes upon the head of him who knows how to subjugate himself.

Even the Emperor Charles V, after the Battle of Pavia, wrote to Colonna: ‘We will always remember that your name is most auspicious’.12 Moreover, Colonna herself made use of the play on words in her early verse ‘Pistola’, addressed to her husband: ‘If you sought Victory, I was near; but you, in leaving me, also left her’.13 Lastly, Fini’s epigram testifies to Colonna’s conversion—a conversion that affected many aspects of her daily life. It attests to her rejection of the affluence and pomp that had characterised her younger years, when she was immersed in the vibrant setting of the Neapolitan court and the intellectual 11 Colonna 1892: 149 (letter LXXXVII, 4 November 1537). See other texts by Ariosto, Luigi Tansillo, Paolo Giovio and Galeazzo di Tarsia in Cupperi 2007: 243–4. 12 ‘tuum Victoriae nomen auspicatissimum nobis semper crederemus’. Colonna 1892: 28 (letter XX, 26 March 1525). 13 ‘Se vittoria volevi io t’era a presso, / ma tu, lasciando me, lasciasti lei’ (A2: 1). Numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982.

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circle of Costanza d’Avalos on Ischia. There is ample documentary evidence of the sumptuous dresses worn by Colonna during the court festivities of those early years, and as many testimonies from later in her life—often tinged with bewilderment—observing the drabness of the ‘humble habit’ (vilis … vestis, line 6) she habitually donned in the wake of her husband’s death in 1525.14 Some of these remarks date from her sojourn in Ferrara. A chronicle from that period relates how, ‘on 8 May [1537], Her Lady the Marchioness of Pescara came to Ferrara in plain attire’.15 And a certain Grossino, on 8 June of the same year, used similar words to describe Colonna’s dress to the Duke of Mantua upon her arrival at the Estense court to visit Renée of France: ‘This morning the Her Lady the Marchioness of Pescara came to visit Her Lady the Duchess, garbed in a very wretched dress; they were together such a long time that the Duchess kept the Marchioness to dine with her’.16 Equally salient is Fini’s observation of Colonna’s thinness (‘ieiuna … dextera’, lines 7–8); on many occasions, Colonna’s contemporaries attest that her fasting was so severe that it nearly endangered her very life.17 Lastly, Fini records the alteration in the Marchioness’s daily occupations, as she transformed herself from a powerful court lady into a sort of lay nun, dedicating herself to meditation and sacred texts (‘factos Davidis, Christique libellos’, line 7). Notably, in November 1537—the same month in which Fini composed his epigram—Aretino wrote to Colonna using similar language: ‘You have altered your reading habits, trading poetry for the prophets; you study Christ, Paul, Augustine, Jerome and the other heralds of our religion’.18 Fini’s epigram, then, was certainly written for Vittoria Colonna. A response to the poem is found on the following folio (209rv), and to my knowledge, it has only been published three times. Its first appearance was in a contribution by an otherwise unknown G. F. Taddei entitled ‘A mystic epigram by Vittoria Colonna’ (Un epigramma mistico di Vittoria Colonna), 14 For further detail, see Copello 2017b. 15 ‘A dì 8 di maggio è venuta a Ferrara la S[ignora] Marchesa di Pescara in abito rimesso’. Cargnoni 1988–93: II.426. 16 ‘In questa mattina è venuta la S[igno]ra Marchesa di Pescara a visitare la S[igno]ra Duchessa, vestita in abito molto abiecto, dove sono state molto insieme, talché l’ha tenuta a desinare in compagnia’. Cited in Campori 1878: 12. 17 See Copello 2017b. 18 ‘Havete cambiato lettione, e trasformato i libri poetici ne i volumi prophetici, studiate Christo, Paolo, Agostino, Girolamo e l’altre squille de la religione’. Colonna 1892: 149–50 (letter LXXXVII, 4 November 1537).

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published in 1933 in the journal Il Vasari. The second was in Silvio Pasquazi’s volume Poeti estensi del Rinascimento (1966). The third was in Pasquazi’s Storia di Ferrara (1994).19 It has been nearly invisible in the scholarship.20 The poem is composed of four elegiac couplets full of a ‘profoundly mystical spirit’, which fixate on ‘the Christian ethical sense of the word “Victoria”’ (Figs. 6.1 and 6.2).21 Divae Victoriae Aterninae Responsio ad Danielem Finum Certe ego nec mundum vici, nec vincere possum: hostis enim maior viribus ille meis. Is mundum vicit qui pendens stipite22 ab alto sanguine puniceo crimina nostra luit, cui cessit Princeps tenebraeque et longa tyrannis, quo reparata uno est vindice23 nostra salus. Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, victoria pendet, atque datum nomen, si sapis, inde puta. Response from the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno to Daniele Fini Certainly I have not vanquished the world, nor can I vanquish it: that enemy is indeed more powerful than my forces. The world was won by Him who, hanging from that high wood, washed our sins with his red blood. Before Him the Prince of shadows and that long tyranny surrendered; thanks to Him—unique vindicator!—salvation was restored. Upon him, o my Daniel, depends my victory; and, if you have sound judgement, understand that he is the source of my name.

19 Taddei 1933: 3–7; Pasquazi 1966: 159; Pasquazi 1994: VII.113–21. 20 Cox 2008: 68 and 290n131; Sanson 2016: 207. 21 ‘spirito profondamente mistico’; ‘senso etico cristiano della parola “Victoria”’. Taddei 1933: 6. 22 Stipite is common metonymy in Latin hymnography for Christ’s cross; in particular, linked with the verb pendere, see Blume and Dreves 1961: IV.184 (‘pendens in crucis stipite’); VI.192 (‘qui pendens in stipite’); XX.158 (‘dum pendet in stipite’); XXXV.83 (‘alto pendens stipite’); XXXVIII.128 (‘corpus pendes in crucis stipide’); XLVI.186 (‘Iesu, pendens stipide’). 23 Christ is commonly identified as vindex in the Latin hymnographic tradition.

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141 Fig. 6.1. Vittoria Colonna, ‘Response from the Divine Vittoria of the Aterno to Daniele Fini’. Spiritual epigram (I.437: 209r). Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, Ferrara.

Fig. 6.2. Vittoria Colonna, ‘Response from the Divine ­Vittoria of the Aterno to Daniele Fini’. Spiritual epigram (I.437: 209v). Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, Ferrara.

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The poem begins in medias res. To look at it beside Fini’s is to see that Colonna is responding to him from the very first line, taking up the same key terms, almost as if it were a response per le rime: Daniel Finus ad Divam Victoriam Aterninam

Divae Victoriae Aterninae Responsio ad ­Danielem Finum

Ex te nomen habes victo Victoria mundo: conveniens aliud non tibi nomen erat. Illud ab effectu tibi congruit; indidit illud en tibi, venturi praescia facta, parens. Illecebras et opes et mundi commoda calcas; quae tibi nunc vilis regia vestis erat nunc ieiuna factos Davidis, Christique libellos dextera, quae sceptrum ferre solebat, habet. Si mundi es νίκη, quae sunt tibi praemia pugnae? Mox mihi: ‘Post cinerea’, inquis, ‘Olympus erit’.

Certe ego nec mundum vici, nec vincere possum: hostis enim maior viribus ille meis. Is mundum vicit qui pendens stipite ab alto sanguine puniceo crimina nostra luit, cui cessit Princeps tenebraeque et longa tyrannis, quo reparata uno est vindice nostra salus. Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, victoria pendet, atque datum nomen, si sapis, inde puta.

Colonna seems to reject the entire poetic tradition making use of her name, almost as if to say: victory is my name, but not by my own merit; my victory depends on Christ’s sacrifice. It remains to be proven that Colonna was actually the poet behind these lines. Did she know Latin well enough to compose elegiac couplets? Documentary evidence is scarce on this topic. Only Filonico Alicarnasseo, who knew Colonna personally and authored a biography of her (if not always a credible one), recounts that ‘she expresses herself both in Latin and in Italian for the benef it of the worldly in many compositions and works worthy of great consideration and lasting repute’.24 Certainly Colonna, born into one of the most important noble families in Italy, would have received an elite education that would have included Latin. Her mother’s family, the Montefeltro, had a strong tradition of humanistic education for women dating back to the early fifteenth century.25 As Helena Sanson

24 ‘per l’utilità de’ mondani così in latino come nell’italica favella molte compositioni et opra di grande consideratione et memoria’. In Colonna 1892: 518. 25 Clough 1996.

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has recently highlighted, ‘we find words or quotations in Latin embedded in the vernacular of Colonna’s letters’.26 She received numerous letters in Latin, but she did not write letters in that language. Beyond brief citations contained in epistles and the present epigram, the only other attestation is an oration entitled Oratio edita per Victoriam Columnam Marchionem Piscariae, found in the manuscript held in Rome’s Biblioteca Casanatense (897, D.VI.38), and published by Pier Ercole Visconti in 1840.27 No feature of the text or context, however, allows us to attribute this oratio to Colonna with certainty. And yet the epigram addressed to Fini contains numerous features characteristic of Colonna’s poetry, starting with a penchant for inverting the premise of the proposta, in a manner apparent also, for example, in her poetic exchange with Michelangelo.28 Moreover, portions of the epigram echo themes recurrent in the rime spirituali. Let us begin with the poem’s incipit: Certe ego nec mundum vici, nec vincere possum (line 1)

Puns on the name ‘Vittoria’ were often used and abused by authors addressing themselves to Colonna, as has already been observed. Indeed, the poet herself benefitted from this tactic in her reply to the aforementioned letter from Charles: Il nome mio tengo in grandissima stima, essendo da la Cesarea Maestà Vostra preso in augurio felice, né incongruamente, essendomi stato imposto per la vitoria de soi passati; conosco haver solo in vincer me stessa usato, desiderando più presto, con tanti iminentissimi et diversi pericoli, che ’l Signor mio Marchese serva Sua Maestà che vengi ad acquietarsi con me.29

26 Sanson 2016: 207. 27 Colonna 1840: CXLV. 28 See Copello 2017a. 29 Colonna 1892: 31 (letter XXI, 1 May 1525; text revised from MS Cons. Ven. 160.4.1 in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana of Venice: 260v). In another context, see sonnet A1: 35, 12–13: after the death of d’Avalos, ‘his name remains in me, so that, in vanquishing this mortal pain, I live’ (rimane il nome in me, sì che ’l mortale / dolor vincendo vivo).

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I hold my name in greatest esteem, since Your Imperial Majesty has taken it as a happy omen, nor incongruously, since it was bestowed upon me by the victory of your forefathers; I know I have used it only in overcoming myself, desiring, amidst most imminent and numerous dangers, that my Lord Marquis might serve His Majesty, rather than come to live in tranquillity with me.

The context in this case is not so much spiritual as affective: Colonna claims to wish that her husband should find himself in the service of the emperor rather than by her side. The epigram, meanwhile, speaks of a spiritual victory in the world. Mundus is the term used in the Gospels to speak of the sin and temptation to which humans are exposed during earthly life, such that Satan is described as ‘prince of this world’ (princeps hujus mundi, John 12:31 and 14:30). In the unbalanced struggle to defeat the evil that dwells as much around (‘il mondo’) as inside (‘me stessa, se medesma’, etc.), one is sustained by faith alone: Se con l’armi celesti avess’io vinto me stessa, i sensi e la ragion umana, andrei con altro spirto alta e lontana dal mondo e dal suo onor falso e dipinto; su l’ali de la fede il pensier … sarebbe fuor di questa valle insana da verace virtute alzato e spinto. (S1: 58, 1–8) If with celestial arms I had overcome myself—my senses and my mortal reason—I would go with a different spirit high and far from the world and from its false and duplicitous honour. On the wings of faith, my thoughts … would be risen and spurred by true virtue out of this mad vale. Duo lumi porge a l’uomo il vero Sole … l’altro, per cui sol Dio s’onora e cole, ne scorge al Ciel per disusate scale, ed indi poggian poi più su quell’ale ch’Egli, Sua gran mercé, conceder sòle. Col primo natural la voglia indegna vince quel cor gentil che sproni e freno dona a l’alta ragion d’ogni desio;

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con l’altro il mondo e se medesmo sdegna colui che chiude a l’ombra ed apre il seno al raggio puro che ’l trasforma in Dio. (S1: 13, 1–11) The true Sun gives to man two lights [reason and faith] … ; the other light [faith], through which alone God is honoured and venerated, leads us to Heaven by an uncommon ladder, and then those wings ascend higher that He, by His great mercy, is in the habit of conceding. With the former, innate light, the unworthy desire wins that noble heart that might give spur and rein to every desire to the high reason of every desire; with the latter, he who closes his mind off to shadow and opens it to the pure ray that converts him into God disdains the world and himself. spero … d’altro ch’oro aver corona se con leggier salto saprò in tutto fuggir dal falso mondo. (S1: 2, 12–14) I hope … to have a crown made of something greater than gold, if with a light step I will learn to flee wholly from this false world. metter convien noi stessi in bando del cieco mondo, sì che qui si moia e ’n Dio si viva, e Lui s’ami ed onori. (S1: 19, 12–14) we should condemn ourselves to exile from this blind world, so that here one shall die and in God one shall live, and Him one shall love and honour. ond’ella, rimirando in quello adorno suo ben … spreggia ricchezza, e ’l mondo, e più se stessa. (S1: 37, 12–14) so that the soul, observing arrayed its good … disdains riches, and the world, and moreover itself. Vanno i pensier talor carghi di vera fede al gran Figlio in croce … l’alma fedel, poi che fatta è rubella del mondo e di se stessa … (S1: 45, 1–7)

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My thoughts turn sometimes, laden with true faith, to the great Son upon the cross … the faithful soul, since it has been made rebel against the world and itself … conviene a noi fuggir dal fero mondo nimico … (S1: 81, 5–6)30 it is fitting that we should flee from the proud and inimical world …

Man cannot defeat sin by his own strength alone, since the enemy is vastly superior: hostis enim maior viribus ille meis (line 2)

An awareness of her insufficiency in the battle against evil—and, therefore, in the quest for Heaven—also emerges in Colonna’s rime spirituali: ma non ho da me forza a l’alta impresa (S1: 53, 11) but I lack on my own the strength for such a lofty undertaking u’ piede uman per sé non sale (S1: 1, 11) where mortal foot on its own may not climb Non giungon l’umane ali a l’alto segno senza il vento divin (S1: 45, 9–10) Human wings cannot reach the high sign without the divine wind Lume del Ciel, che ne’ superni giri Te ’n porti il cor per non vedute scale ove nostro sperar per sé non sale, né dassi ad uom mortal che a tanto aspiri (S1: 126, 1–4) Light of Heaven, you carry the heart with you in the supernal circles by steps unseen, where our hope by itself cannot climb, nor is it given to mortal man that he can aspire to go so high 30 See also S1: 35, 1–2; 43, 1–8; 72, 1–8.

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Even the great victory of Michael and his angels against the army of Satan is credited to a maggior virtù (cf. maior viribus)—that of God: Ma se ben per la patria e per l’onore di Dio v’armaste, e per la pace eterna, d’altra maggior virtù fu la vittoria (S1: 129, 9–11) But if verily you armed yourselves for the kingdom and honour of God, and for eternal peace, the victory belonged to a greater virtue

Conscious of her insufficiency, the poet prays to Mary ‘that I might feel his vital force work within me’ (S2: 22, 11):31 the force of Christ. We can perceive here the need to attribute man’s salvation to Christ’s merits alone, instead of to our human works—the same need that gave rise to Lutheran arguments.32 In fact, the only one who has the power to overcome evil and the world is the crucified Lord:33 Is mundum vicit qui pendens stipite ab alto (line 3)

The motif has its origins in the Gospels: ‘Quoniam omne quod natum est ex Deo, vincit mundum: et haec est victoria, quae vincit mundum, fides nostra. Quis est, qui vincit mundum, nisi qui credit quoniam Jesus est Filius Dei’ (1 John 5:4–5: ‘For whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?’). It is one that recurs throughout the rime spirituali: Veggio in croce il Signor … avendo su le spalle il grave peso de le colpe del mondo, e ’n tale stato la morte e l’aversario stuolo irato vincer (S1: 77, 1–8)

31 ‘ch’io senta oprar in me sua vital forza’. 32 In Colonna’s epigram, ‘we perceive the theological and spiritual need to attribute our salvation to Christ’s merits a great deal more than to our human works—the same need that, isolated and aggravated, gave rise to Lutheran arguments. And we find another echo of these arguments in the second verse of Colonna’s composition’ (Pasquazi 1994: VII.132–3). 33 Pasquazi 1994: VII.132–3.

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I see the Lord on the cross … bearing on his shoulders the grave weight of the sins of the world; and in such a state, overcoming death and the angry enemy host Del mondo e del nimico folle e vano gir trionfando, e de l’iniqua morte, Signor, … grand’opra fu di Re saggio e prudente (S1: 92, 1–9) The Lord, going triumphant over the world, and the foolish and vain enemy, and iniquitous death … it was the great work of a wise and prudent King … Ei fatt’uom qui vinse l’Inferno e ’l mondo (S1: 63, 9–10) He, become man, here overcome the Inferno and the world le piaghe ond’Ei la morte e ’l mondo vinse (S1: 124, 14)34 the wounds by which He overcomes death and the world Christ has conquered thanks to his very blood: sanguine puniceo crimina nostra luit (line 4)

In the rime spirituali the reader is reminded often of the salvific properties of Christ’s blood (S1: 47, 6–8; S2: 36, 91–6). Note how the line ‘noi ch’eravam del gran nimico prede’ (S2: 36) accords with line 5 of the epigram, ‘Princeps tenebraeque et longa tyrannis’: the ‘gran nemico’ corresponds with the ‘Princeps tenebraeque’, the Devil, who was the ‘tyrant’ of us, his prey. The penultimate verse of the epigram is now clearer. It recapitulates the sense of the entire poem. Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, victoria pendet (line 7) Upon him, o my Daniel, depends my victory

34 See also S1: 30, 1–11; 125, 1–4; 168, 12–13.

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The poet’s victory depends not on herself, on her own efforts and abilities. These will always prove inadequate in the face of evil. Her victory depends on Christ. And in this regard, the repetition of the verb pendere is significant. It appears first in line 3: as Christ is ‘hanging’ (pendens) on the cross, so does the poetess ‘hang onto’—depend on—Him (pendet). As Vittoria writes to Reginald Pole, she possesses a desire to ‘humble myself’ (humiliarmi), ‘to annihilate myself and see myself as nothing, and live completely in Him who is every good, every consolation and joy, our every happiness’.35 She expresses a similar desire in the rime spirituali (see S1: 19, 12–4, already quoted). It is the Lord who grants man the ability to overcome the world and himself, so that he might direct himself—nimble and light—toward heaven. The same idea is expressed in the rime spirituali: Padre nostro e del Ciel, con quanto amore, con quanta grazia e in quanti vari modi dal mondo e da se stesso l’uomo snodi acciò libero a Te rivolga il core! (S1: 95, 1–4) Our heavenly Father, with how much love, with how much grace and in how many ways do you untether man from the world and from himself so that, free, he might return his heart to You!

The final line of the epigram reiterates this idea, responding to lines 3–4 of Fini’s epigram and echoing his use of the verb indidit: ‘atque datum nomen, si sapis, inde puta’. Colonna asserts that the name was given to her not by her mother, but by Christ Himself. Her name—that is to say her identity, that which ultimately defines her—derives not from pagan fate having foreseen her triumph (‘fated’, as both Giovio and Aretino put it), but rather finds its origin and substance in Christ alone. In conclusion, both the date of composition and the thematic and stylistic similarity of the Latin epigram to Colonna’s spiritual poetry suggest that the poem should be attributed to Colonna herself. In the absence of documentary evidence attesting to a habit of versifying in Latin, we might hypothesize that she employed a secretary or a humanist at the Ferrarese court for assistance with the meter. We in fact have records of a similar occurrence, in 1528, when Antonio Minturno composed a Latin translation of a poem

35 ‘de annichilarmi et vedermi niente, et viver tutta in Colui che è ogni bene, ogni consolatione, gaudio et felicità nostra’. In Pagano and Ranieri 1989: 100–1.

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that Colonna had written in praise of Lucrezia Scaglione, lady in waiting to Costanza d’Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla.36 As for when the poem was written, like the majority of poems in the manuscript, Colonna’s epigram has no date in the margin. The preceding poem—dated 10 January 1538—and the one that follows, marked 4 April 1538, provide the likely boundaries for the date of composition. However, Colonna left Ferrara on 22 February of that year, as attested by a letter from Ercole Gonzaga.37 It is reasonable to conclude that she composed the poem while still at the Este court, and therefore likely between 10 January and 22 February 1538.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion DBI

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome.

Manuscripts Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, MS I.437. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS Cons. Ven. 160.4.1.

Primary works Boverio, Z. (1632) Annalium seu sacrarum historiarum ordinis Minorum S. Francisci qui Capucini vocantur tomus primus. Lyons. Caro, A. (1569) Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Venice. Colonna, P. (2015) Apologia mulierum. In difesa delle donne, ed. F. Minonzio. Como. Colonna, V. (1840) Le rime di Vittoria Colonna, ed. P. E. Visconti Rome. ––– (1892) Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. Giovio, P. (1984) Dialogi et descriptiones, ed. E. Travi. Rome. 36 Colonna 1892, Supplemento V. Colonna’s text was divided into two epigrams (Minturno 1564: 5v). 37 Luzio 1885: 32.

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Martirano, B. (1998) Il pianto d’Aretusa, ed. T. R. Toscano. Naples. Minturno, A. (1564) Epigrammata et elegiae. Venice. Rime (1545) Rime diverse di molti eccellentissimi autori. Venice Rota, B. (1572) Delle egloghe pescatorie. Naples.

Secondary works Antonelli, G. (1884) Indice dei manoscritti della Civica biblioteca di Ferrara. Ferrara. Blume, C. and Dreves, G. M. (1961) Analecta hymnica Medii Aevi. Frankfurt. Campori, G. (1878) ‘Vittoria Colonna, memoria con documenti inediti’, Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di storia patria delle provincie dell’Emilia 3/2: 1–45. Cargnoni, C. (1988–93) I frati cappuccini. Documenti e testimonianze del primo secolo. Perugia. Clough, C. H. (1996) ‘Daughters and wives of the Montefeltro: outstanding bluestockings of the Quattrocento’, Renaissance Studies 10/1: 31–55. Copello, V. (2017a) ‘Il dialogo poetico tra Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna’, Italian Studies 62/3: 271–81. ––– (2017b) ‘“La signora marchesa a casa”: tre aspetti della biografia di Vittoria Colonna. Con una tavola cronologica’, Testo 73: 9–45. Cox, V. (2008) Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. Cupperi, W. (2007) ‘Il nome fatale di Vittoria: note su due medaglie della Marchesa di Pescara’, in Lo sguardo archeologico: i normalisti per Paul Zanker, ed. F. De Angelis. Pisa: 239–53. Luzio, A. (1885) ‘Vittoria Colonna’, Rivista storica mantovana 1: 1–52. Pagano, S. M. and C. Ranieri (1989) Nuovi documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole. Vatican City. Pasquazi, S. (1966) Poeti estensi del Rinascimento. Con due appendici. Florence. ––– (1994) ‘La poesia in latino’, Il Rinascimento: La Letteratura, 7 vols., ed. W. Moretti, Storia di Ferrara VII: 113–21. Petrocchi, M. (1961) Una Devotio Moderna nel Quattrocento italiano e altri studi. Florence. Pistilli, G. (1997) ‘Fini, Fino’, in DBI 48. Sanson, H. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and language’ in Companion: 195–233. Scarpati C. (1987) Dire la verità al principe. Milan. Taddei, G. F. (1933) ‘Un epigramma mistico di Vittoria Colonna’, Il Vasari: rivista d’arte e di studi vasariani 12/1–2: 3–7.

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Veronica Copello

About the author Veronica Copello is Research Associate at the Università degli Studi dell’Insubria. Her publications on Colonna include numerous articles, an edition of the poetry for Michelangelo (2020) and a translation of Selected Letters (2022). She is now working on a new edition of Colonna’s correspondence.

7.

Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna: Insights into Early Modern Piety and Poetics* Sarah Rolfe Prodan

Abstract This chapter examines Vittoria Colonna’s biblically inspired verse and the pious traditions to which they point, suggesting that for her, a devout writer, the Bible was not just a text to be read, interpreted, written about and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon. Through a close reading of selected verses in which the poet inserts scriptural transpositions into poetic constructs highlighting the lyric persona’s unrealized spiritual desires, this chapter explores the writer’s practice and seeming promotion of the lectio divina and the lectio spiritualis, that is, of her use of the Bible not as a pious source of inspiration, but as an instrument of personal devotion by which she might be brought to direct, personally transformative engagement with the divine. Keywords: sacred reading, empathic meditation, Italian Reformation, Counter-Reformation, sola fide

Vittoria Colonna has received considerable scholarly attention for her spiritual poetry and for the traditions of prayer and empathic meditation to which they point.1 Analyses of Colonna and her writing discuss religion and spirituality, theology and literature, but little has been said * I would like to thank the Lauro De Bosis Fellowship Committee and Harvard University for their generous support of the research included in this paper. 1 For an overview of recent scholarship, see Cajelli 2018 and Volta 2018: 253–65, esp. 253–5 (on the rime spirituali) and 260–5 (on private devotion). For a discussion of Colonna’s spiritual poetry, see, in particular, Colonna 2005: 1–44 and Brundin 2008. On the devotional character of

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch07

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about the poet as an explicitly pious reader of the Bible, that is, about her approach to the Scriptures as spiritually efficacious devotional texts by which one might be brought to direct and transformative engagement with the divine.2 A religious reader of the Bible, Vittoria Colonna approached the Scriptures and other spiritual texts with pious desire, asking important personal and existential questions—ones framed and defined by the terms and contours of Christian eschatology. For Colonna, as for her literate contemporaries, the Scriptures were not just texts to be read and interpreted, or copied and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon; loci of divine encounter, the books of the Bible were promising instruments of spiritual self-change.3 Colonna’s devotional approach to the Scriptures is evident in her spiritual verses. According to one count, sixty-two of Colonna’s spiritual poems are inspired by scriptural passages. 4 In Colonna’s verses, where the speaker communicates wishes in explicit reference to biblical figures, types and narratives, one finds a rewarding terrain for exploring the poet’s piety, as the scriptural references Colonna weaves into her texts reveal the devout writer’s spiritual habits and her approach to religious composition. Through a close reading of religious sonnets in which the poet deploys biblical transpositions to express the lyric persona’s unrealised spiritual desires, this chapter will explore the writer’s knowledge of pious modes of scriptural engagement. Given Colonna’s attraction to the monastic life,5 her familiarity with systems of sacred reading should come as no surprise. The lectio divina is a traditional monastic technique of praying the Scriptures that involves four related movements: lectio (reading aloud and listening intently); mediatio (reflecting on that which strikes one in the reading and applying it to the self); oratio (responding prayerfully to God in repentance, supplication or gratitude); and contemplatio (receiving divine grace; an experience of peace for which practitioners strive, but which

Colonna’s writing, see Doglio 1993b, Pisacane 2005, Ardissino 2015, Copello 2015, Brundin 2016a and Ranieri 2016. On Colonna’s spirituality, see Fragnito 2016. See also Mazzetti 1973. 2 For studies on Vittoria Colonna’s poetry and the Bible, see Lo Sauro 2007, Laurenti 2013a, esp. 569–84, Laurenti 2013b, Forni 2009a and Girardi 2018. On pious approaches to Scripture and Colonna’s letters, see Doglio 1993b and Pisacane 2005. On Colonna’s biblically inspired poetry and the religious art Michelangelo prepared for her, see Barnes 2013. See also Valerio 1991. 3 Corbellini 2012a, 2012b and 2012c. 4 Lo Sauro 2007: 184. 5 See Targoff 2016, Targoff 2018: 44–57 and Volta 2018: 256–60.

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may nevertheless elude them).6 The lectio divina is a process of reading formationally rather than informationally,7 that is, with the intention of being personally and profoundly shaped by it. One’s aim in reading the Scriptures in this way is to know the self and God, and to enhance that relationship. One finds a scriptural basis for the technique of the lectio divina in Luke 2:19, where upon hearing from shepherds how angelic messengers had revealed Christ’s recent birth in Bethlehem to them, Mary ‘kept all these words, pondering them in her heart’.8 It would appear that Mary’s mastery of this very technique rendered her an exemplary model for Colonna in Sonnet 64 for Michelangelo (S1: 131):9 Angel beato, a cui ’l gran Padre expresse l’antico patto, e poi con noi quel nodo che die’ la pace, la salute e ’l modo d’osservar l’alme Sue larghe promesse: colui, ch’al grande ufficio pria t’elesse, con l’alma inchino e con la mente lodo, e da l’alta ambasciata ancora io godo che ’n quel virgineo cor sì ben s’impresse: ma vorrei mi mostrassi il volto e i gesti, l’umil risposta e quel casto timore, l’ardente carità, la fede viva de la donna del cielo, e con che onesti desiri ascolti, accetti, onori e scriva i divini precetti entro nel core. (emphasis added)10 6 For an introduction to the lectio divina and its history, see Boland 1976: 470–87. An insightful modern discussion of the ancient practice is to be found in Dysinger 1993. On the monastic tradition from which the lectio divina emerges, see Leclerq 1960. A foundational primary source for the practice is Guigo II 1863. 7 This elegant and succinct characterization of the lectio divina in terms of formation and information appears in Mulholland 1985: 49–59. 8 ‘Maria autem conservabat omnia verba haec conferens in corde suo’. Biblia sacra. English from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate. 9 Vat. lat. 11539, fol. 33r, as transcribed in Colonna 2005: 106. There are few substantive differences between the sonnet for Michelangelo and the print version in Colonna 1546, transcribed in Colonna 1982: 150 (S1: 131). 10 An alternate translation of the second tercet is possible here: ‘and with which honest desires I might listen, accept, honour, and write the divine precepts within my own heart’ (emphasis added). The translations in this chapter are mine. I thank Virginia Cox, Konrad Eisenbichler and Shannon McHugh for their keen suggestions. I am solely responsible for any infelicities they might contain.

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Blessed angel, to whom our great Father pronounced the ancient pact, and then shared with us the bond that granted peace, salvation and the means for souls to fulfill His nourishing, bounteous promises. To Him who first elected you to His great service, I bow with my soul and praise with my mind, and I still benefit from the sublime message that impressed itself so well in the virginal heart. But I wish for you to show me the face and the gestures, the humble response and chaste fear, the burning charity and living faith of the Lady of Heaven, and with which honest desires she listens, accepts, honors, and writes the divine precepts in her heart.

In this poem to the announcing angel, the speaker conveys a desire to emulate the Virgin Mother who successfully received the imprint of the divine message in her pure heart. Longing to receive Christ, the lyric persona humbles herself prayerfully before God and venerates Him silently in her mind. In the context of this holy conversation, the devout speaker requests to be shown the disposition and deportment of Mary at the time of the Annunciation so as to experience spiritual benefit through divine presence and transformative change by communing with the holy Word as Mary did. Uniquely striking is the attention Colonna draws to the Virgin’s reception of the divine Word by the angelic messenger, and thus to the process by which the lyric persona might also inscribe sacred precepts within her own heart. The four verbs the poet deploys to convey this wish in verse thirteen subtly but clearly evoke the movements of the lectio divina.11 During the lectio, one ‘listens’ (ascolti) intently to the living divine word (which was most commonly read aloud and repeated). In the meditatio, one ‘accepts’ (accetti) the message, taking it deep into one’s mind to reflect upon it, pondering any precepts and applying them to the self. With the oratio, one ‘honours’ (onori) the tenets or injunctions (and thus also their originator) by following them with humility, turning reverentially, repentantly or beseechingly to God in response to His message, and requesting His assistance in order to live by His commands. With the contemplatio, should it occur, one receives grace; the divine somatically accompanies the petitioner, and writes or ‘inscribes’ (scriva) in the supplicant’s interior, leaving signs of its presence. In Sonnet 64, Colonna offers an almost 11 The movements are typically presented in the order in which Colonna seems to allude to them in verse thirteen. In practice, however, they did not always occur according to a strictly linear or chronological progression.

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meta-literary reflection on the divine word as text and on how one ought to engage with it. For that sacred reading practice, her literary persona is as much a model as Mary.12 The early modern system of sacred reading was not limited to the lectio divina. A later development and a less scripted practice, the lectio spiritualis differed from the lectio divina in key ways, as Brian Stock has emphasised.13 First, it was done in private and in silence. Second, it involved reading, reflecting and writing. Third, responding to the reading, the practitioner engaged in self-scrutiny, applying insights gleaned from the text to the self, establishing through self-examination and the recording of one’s emotions and personal reactions as a ‘spiritual autobiography’.14 Fourth, the writing to which the reading gave rise was understood as a spiritual exercise. Fifth, though inspired by the reading of a religious or devotional passage, the spiritual reflection and composition that followed did not require the presence of the text itself. The process of reading, reflecting, responding and writing could thus unfold over an extended period of time. Petrarch is considered an important originator of the practice,15 but it was also promoted in the sixteenth century by the Spanish religious reformer Juan de Valdés, who resided in Rome and Naples between 1530 and 1541, and greatly influenced reform thought and piety in Italy. In Valdés’s Diálogo de doctrina cristiana (Dialogue on Christian Doctrine) (1529), the Archbishop explains to his disciple Antonio that, when reading the books of the Bible, he humbles himself before the Lord; and when he encounters something in a text that he thinks might enrich his soul if he possessed it, he prays to God for it and contemplates.16 In his Alfabeto cristiano (Christian Alphabet) (c. 1535), Valdés indicates the spiritual importance of comparing oneself to biblical models specifically.17 It is this kind of religious reading, writing and self-scrutiny that one sees reflected and modelled in Colonna’s poetry.

12 On exhortations to the lectio divina in Colonna’s letters, see Doglio 1993b: 1005–8. 13 Stock 2000: 171–83 and Stock 2011: 101–14. The distinctions between the lectio divina and the lectio spiritualis are outlined (but not numbered) by Stock. See also Boland 1976: 487–96. 14 Stock 2000: 175. 15 Stock 2000: 181. 16 Valdés 1981: 153 (fol. 97r). On this practice in Italy, see Corbellini 2012c: 74–81. 17 Valdés 1988: 131 (fol. 83r). On the devotional reading habits of the reform-minded intellectuals who, like Colonna, gravitated around Cardinal Reginald Pole in Viterbo after 1541, see Overell 2012.

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Consider Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo (S1: 57):18 S’io, mossa con Zacheo da intenso affetto per mirar quel gran sol che ’n ciel fa giorno, m’alzassi tanto che le turbe intorno non fesser ombra al mio basso intelletto, sperar potrei che questo indegno petto gli fosse albergo, e in quel dolce soggiorno m’aprisse raggio il suo bel lume adorno ch’io provassi altro che mondan diletto; tal che lieta ed umil nel gran convito gli apparecchiassi una candida fede per mensa, e poi per cibo l’alma e ’l core, si ch’ei dicesse, ‘Omai da te sbandito sia il vizio, che con larga ampia mercede oggi t’ha fatto salva il mio valore’. If I, moved like Zacchaeus by immense desire to behold the great Sun that brings day to the sky, could lift myself so high that the surrounding crowds would cast no shadow on my lowly intellect, I could hope that this unworthy breast might host Him, and in that sweet sojourn His beautiful, fair light might shine a ray in me so that I could feel more than an earthly delight; so that happy and humble at the great banquet I could prepare for Him pure faith as a table, and then my soul and heart as food, such that He would say to me: ‘Henceforth vice is banished from you, because today with great and abundant mercy my worth has saved you’.

This sonnet takes as its point of departure the lyric persona’s desire to be with or like Zacchaeus, a wealthy but unscrupulous publican who climbed a tree to see Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. The story is narrated in Luke 19: 1–10. Because the crowd was large and Zacchaeus was small in stature, he ran ahead to ascend to a height from which he might clearly observe Jesus arriving. The outcome of elevating himself above the others in this way was that Zacchaeus became visible to the very individual upon whom he sought to cast an unimpeded gaze. Seeking Jesus, Zacchaeus was found by Him. 18 Vat. lat 11539, fol. 8r, as transcribed in Colonna 2005: 66. In this case, there are more than a few substantive differences between the sonnet for Michelangelo and the 1546 Valgrisi print version (Colonna 1546) transcribed in Colonna 1982: 113 (S1: 57). I will address these differences ahead in the body of the chapter.

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In readily accepting to receive Jesus in his home as he was instructed to do by the Son of God himself, Zacchaeus was transformed into a good person. Interpreting the biblical passage allegorically and transposing it into the sonnet, Colonna the poet expresses the wish that her mind might ascend (to the divine) as Zacchaeus did in climbing the sycamore.19 In her desire for edification, transformation and divine encounter, Colonna looked to other exemplary models in addition to Mary and Zacchaeus. In Sonnet 36 for Michelangelo (S:113),20 for instance, the speaker expresses a wish to be like other biblical figures who successfully received the divine Word: Potess’io in questa acerba atra tempesta del travagliato mondo entrar ne l’arca col caro a Dio Noè, poich’altra barca non giova a l’acqua perigliosa infesta; o con la schiera ebrea, ch’ardita e presta l’aperto rosso mar sicura varca, e poi sul lito, del gran peso scarca, ringrazia Dio cantando in gioia e ’n festa; o con Pietro il mio cor, alor ch’io sento cader la fede al sollevar de l’onde, de la divina man sentisse alzarsi; e s’al lor l’esser mio già non risponde, non è il favor del Ciel scemato o spento, né quei soccorsi fur mai tardi o scarsi. Would that I could, in this bitter, dark storm of the afflicted world, enter into the ark with Noah, dear to God, since no other vessel is of use in dangerous, infested waters; or with the bold and swift Hebrew throng that safely traverses the opened Red Sea and then, on the shore, relieved of its heavy burden, thanks God, singing with joy in celebration; or with Peter, when I sense my faith failing at the mounting of the waves, feel my heart rise by His divine hand; and, if my being does not yet correspond to theirs, it is not the favour of Heaven that has decreased or extinguished, nor was its help ever late or scarce.

19 See also Claudio Scarpati’s discussion of the lectio divina and this biblical passage in Scarpati 2004: 704–5 and 2005: 129–62. 20 Vat. lat. 11539, fol. 19r, as transcribed in Colonna 2005: 84.

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Noah listened to God and obeyed his instructions to build an ark in Genesis 6–8. The Hebrew multitude followed the divinely directed Moses and honoured God with great celebration for the miraculous rescue in Exodus 14: 19–33. Peter heard Christ’s message to trust, recovered his failing faith and was uplifted in Matthew 14: 22–33. All of these individuals successfully conversed or communed with God. The speaker expresses an emphatically contra-factual desire to be as they are. Colonna’s choice of the verb rispondere (‘to respond’ in the sense of ‘to correspond’) implies the lyric persona’s deep engagement with the beings against whom she measures herself.21 The marine motif that links the histories of the three protagonists offers a ready and well-established allegory for the journey of the lyric persona’s itinerant soul. The speaker imagines herself in the place of these exemplary figures and compares her state with theirs. Reflecting on the spiritual trajectory and the requirements of the voyage (and thus inevitably too on her relationship with God, its desired end), Colonna the poet finds herself wanting. The lyric persona is neither who nor where she would like to be, yet she expresses faith that through divine assistance she may still arrive at her lofty goal. The logical progression of the sonnet hinges on the completion of the hypothetical predicate clause introduced by the imperfect subjunctive ‘potess’io’ (would that I could) in the incipit. Yet a defining characteristic of this sonnet is the uneasy relation between the main clause and its dependents, for a neat series of verbal agreements do not follow. There is grammatical clarity and completeness in the first quatrain with the infinitive ‘entrar’ (to enter), but things become more ambiguous in the ensuing stanzas due to changes in subject and in verbal tense and mood. In the second quatrain, the subject is no longer the speaker but the throng and the verbs ‘to traverse’ and ‘to thank’ appear in the third person present indicative (‘varca’ and ‘ringrazia’, respectively). In the f irst tercet, the subject is the speaker’s heart and the verb ‘to feel’ is rendered in the third person singular of the imperfect subjunctive (‘sentisse’). This messiness enhances the sense of unreality implied by the verbal mood of the main verb potere (‘to be able to’). The lyric persona’s fate hangs in the balance, and we are not sure how or if she will progress spiritually

21 This same connotation is not present in S1: 113. There are few substantive differences between the sonnet for Michelangelo and the print version in Colonna 1546, transcribed in Colonna 1982: 141 (S1: 113). It is worth noting that S1: 113, v. 12 reads: ‘e, s’al lor l’esser mio non corrisponde’ (and if my being does not correspond to theirs) (translation and emphasis mine).

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in the future; as readers we are left with the impression that it is more a matter of if-only than if-then. The reason for this unfulfilled desire is the speaker herself. Interpreted in this way, the sonnet offers a breathtaking poetic enactment of the lectio spiritualis. The speaker’s seemingly honest and deeply tragic assessment of her state is emotively potent. A moving sonnet, it is capable of inducing catharsis on the part of an attuned religious reader (or listener).22 Colonna does more than prompt the mind and memory of her readers (or listeners) to recall the stories and significance of these figures and biblical narratives. As the poet primes their imagination and appeals to their sense of empathy for the plight of her lyric persona, she invites them to compare themselves to the very same exemplary cast of characters, considering their own state, in general, and their faith and capacity to respond to divine injunctions, in particular. In these spiritual verses, Colonna dramatises the kind of religious practices advocated in devotional texts like the Imitation of Christ.23 In fact, the speaker of all three sonnets examined in this chapter seems to enact pious instructions specific (though not likely exclusive) to that very manual: to humble oneself like Mary before the announcing angel (Sonnet 64); to offer oneself as an oblation to the Lord (Sonnet 14); and to contemplate, in succession, Noah and the Hebrew throng (Sonnet 36).24 Colonna’s status as a poet became connected to her pious identity when she turned to composing religious verse in the mid-1530s. The 1540 print publication of her verse by Comin de Trino for Zoppino in Venice made clear that Colonna’s religious poetry was strongly linked to her exceptional devotion by its accompanying imagery: the title page depicts the poet’s likeness in pious profile before a book and a Crucifix from which she receives rays of divine light.25 The first print publication of the Zacchaeus poem was in this successful edition,26 where it appeared as one of the twenty-four spiritual sonnets announced in the collection’s title. The version printed in the Comin de Trino edition is identical to Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo in Vat. lat. 11539 and to Sonnet 10 in Rinaldo Corso’s 1543 commentary of 22 See Brundin 2016a. 23 Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi (c. 1390–1440) circulated in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in vernacular translations, some anonymous and others erroneously attributed. For a critical edition of the Latin text, see Thomas à Kempis 1982. On Colonna’s poems as prayers, see Ardissino 2015. 24 Book 4, chapters 17, 10 and 1, respectively. 25 Colonna 1540; Crivelli 2016: 106–8. 26 The collection was republished four times in the early 1540s; Crivelli 2016: 104–5.

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Colonna’s spiritual poetry. Curiously, the Zacchaeus sonnet later published in the 1546 Valgrisi print edition differs notably from these earlier versions: S’io piena con Zacheo d’intenso affetto per mirar quel gran Sol, ch’a noi fa giorno, m’alzassi tanto che le turbe intorno non fesser ombra al mio basso intelletto, sperar potrei che questo indegno petto li fosse albergo, e ’n quel breve soggiorno sì mi scaldasse il Suo bel lume adorno ch’io gustassi altro che mondan diletto; e che, poi, lieta, umil, nel gran convito gli appresentassi una candida fede per mensa, e poi per cibo l’alma e ’l core, tal ch’Ei vèr me dicesse: ‘Omai sbandito fia da te il vizio, e larga ampia mercede serberà il Ciel al tuo verace amore’ (emphasis added).27 If I, filled like Zacchaeus with immense desire to behold the great Sun that brings the day for us, could lift myself so much that the surrounding crowds would cast no shadow on my lowly intellect, I could hope that this unworthy breast might host Him, and in that brief sojourn His beautiful, fair light might so warm me that I might taste more than an earthly delight; and then happy and humble at the great banquet I might present Him with pure faith as a table and then my soul and heart as food, so that He might say to me: ‘Henceforth let vice be banished from you, and great, abundant mercy Heaven will reserve for your true love’.

In Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo, the lyric persona is ‘moved’ (mossa) by an intense feeling; in S1: 57, the speaker is ‘filled’ (piena) by one. The divine visitation is described in Sonnet 14 as ‘sweet’ (dolce), and in S1: 57, as ‘brief’ (breve). The speaker of Sonnet 14 hopes to ‘receive a ray’ (m’aprisse raggio) from the indwelling sun; the lyric persona of S1: 57 wishes to be ‘warmed’ (scaldasse) by it. Both speakers offer their faith to Christ as a table, but the lyric persona of Sonnet 14 ‘prepares’ (apparecchiassi) it for Him, while that of S1: 57 ‘presents Him with’ (appresentassi) it. In Sonnet 14, the speaker is 27 Colonna 1982: 113 (S1: 57), transcribed from Colonna 1546. I have used italics to highlight the discrepancies between the 1546 text and the version in the manuscript for Michelangelo, cited above in the text.

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‘saved’ ( fatto salva) by Christ’s ‘merit’ (valore), whereas in S1: 57, Heaven will merely ‘reserve mercy for’ or ‘nourish’ (serberà) the speaker’s ‘true love’ (verace amore). Some of the differences between Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo and S1: 57 draw more attention than others. The f inal verse represents the most obvious point of dissimilarity between the two texts, and it is significant: justification by grace through faith is evoked in Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo, but not in S1: 57.28 In light of this fact, two other discrepancies between the respective versions of the poem seem meaningful: one in verse ten, the other in the incipit. While both ‘appresentassi’ (S1: 57) and ‘apparechiassi’ (Sonnet 14) in verse ten convey the speaker’s symbolic offering of faith to Christ, appresentare means ‘to present’ someone with something, and apparecchiare signifies to ‘prepare’ or to ‘prepare for’ something (including the table for a feast). The distinction is not striking in itself, but considered in context it is suggestive: one finds the past participle apparecchiato (‘prepared for’) in such religious texts as the writings of Catherine of Siena and the devotional classic the Imitation of Christ, where it means ‘spiritually disposed or prepared’ for a ‘serious event’ (such as death and divine encounter), and implies ‘an active and strong mindset’.29 In the incipit of Sonnet 14 for Michelangelo, the speaker describes herself as ‘moved’ (mossa); this is a word that Colonna used—along with ‘instrument’ (strumento)—in her religious correspondence with fellow spirituali that was retained by inquisitors to describe being inspired (to guided action) by the Holy Spirit.30 ‘Filled’ (piena), the speaker of S1: 57 is a passive recipient of divine initiative; ‘moved’ (mossa), the lyric persona of Sonnet 14 is an active collaborator with it. The difference is subtle, but the significance profound; cooperating with grace to achieve personal transformation (and sanctification) was a goal of devotional activity in evangelical circles. The Zacchaeus sonnet, as it was published in the early 1540s, seems to allude more precisely to proto-Protestant ideas and to an explicit pneumatological dimension dear to the spirituali.31 In 1542, Bernardino Ochino—vicar-general of the Capuchin order (1538– 42) whom Vittoria Colonna supported, and later Protestant reformer—took flight from Italy after being summoned by the Roman Inquisition. Pope Paul 28 A doctrine of grace similar to sola fide that evolved among reform-minded Catholics in Italy and found articulation in the Beneficio di Cristo (1540–1), a vernacular treatise that originated among the spirituali; see Prodan 2014: 87–92. 29 Grande dizionario 1961-2002: I.550. 30 Prodan 2014: 112–15. 31 Prodan 2014: 109–20.

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III convened the Council of Trent in 1545. Is it possible that, in the context of these developments, Colonna’s poetry was purged of its heterodox elements to preserve or protect her pious image? One sonnet alone is not enough to draw such a conclusion, and the question itself is not easily answered given the complex manuscript and print tradition, but it is worth investigating.32 Indispensable to any such future studies is the gift manuscript of religious verses that Colonna prepared for Michelangelo:33 a privately disseminated publication shaped by reform thought and generously offered to a personal friend with whom the writer exchanged art and literature and to whom she extended spiritual mentorship.34 The biblical texts Colonna evokes or transposes in her verses—however shaped by mediating literary and theological influences—reveal the habit of typological thinking and its application to the self. Deploying saintly biblical figures and apostles as exempla for ideal relations between the individual and God, Colonna’s religious poems emphasise the divine Word while encouraging spiritual reading, prayer and meditation; for her, the Bible was both a source of literary inspiration and an instrument of devotion, one

32 On censorship concerns during the Reformation and Colonna’s biblically inspired sonnets S1: 12 and S1: 159, see Laurenti 2013b. Colonna’s reputation certainly did not diminish during the Counter-Reformation; see Cox 2016a: 470–1. On the philological complexity associated with Colonna’s poetry, see the references in note 33. For a discussion of religiously motivated alterations to Colonna’s poetry in the 1550s, see Bianco 1998a and Crivelli 2016: 116–20. 33 Vaticano latino 11539. Though the manuscript is not an autograph publication, the collection of 103 spiritual sonnets was prepared by Vittoria Colonna for Michelangelo around 1540 and contains evidence of her close personal involvement in its creation; Colonna 2005: 33–9. Vat. lat. 11539 is one of the rare collections of Colonna’s poetry comprised of religious verse only. Another is the 1546 Valgrisi print edition of her poetry (Colonna 1546, consisting of 179 spiritual sonnets, 93 of which also appear in Vat. lat. 11539). In this chapter, I have chosen to cite from Vat. Lat. 11539 as transcribed by Abigail Brundin in Colonna 2005: 56–138, with reference to corresponding verses in the Valgrisi edition as transcribed by Alan Bullock in Colonna 1982: 85–174. On manuscript Vat. lat. 11539, see now Colonna 2020; also Carusi 1938, Bardazzi 2004, Scarpati 2004 and 2005, Colonna 2005: 1–44, Brundin 2008: 67–100, and Toscano 2017. For a discussion of Vittoria Colonna’s poetry in manuscript form generally, see Brundin 2016b: 39–69. On Vittoria Colonna’s poetry in print, see Crivelli 2016: 69–139. See also the discussion of scribal and print publications in Sapegno 2016: 140–3. 34 The literature is vast. On Vittoria Colonna and the Reformation, see especially Campi 1994, Nagel 1997, Brundin 2002, Fragnito 2005, D’Elia 2006, Brundin 2008, Forcellino 2009, Copello 2017b and Moroncini 2017: 37–57. For a discussion of Colonna’s relationship with Michelangelo, including their exchange of art and poetry, see also Vecce 1992, Prodan 2014: 83–156, Forcellino 2016, Copello 2017a, Moroncini 2017: 83–113 and Targoff 2018: 176–207. On Colonna’s manuscript of poetry for Michelangelo specifically, see the references listed in note 33. On women, the Bible and the Reformation in Italy, see Herzig 2014.

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of particular and cherished vocational relevance.35 Whatever additional allusions or echoes one might find within Colonna’s poetry, her verses point quite specifically to the religious reading technique of the lectio divina and to the pious practice of the lectio spiritualis as fertile sources that gave rise to them.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion Sapegno

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

Manuscripts Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 11539.

Primary works Biblia sacra (2007). Biblia sacra: iuxta Vulgatam versionem, 5th edn., ed. R. Gryson. Stuttgart. Colonna, V. (1540) Rime …, novamente aggiuntovi XXIIII sonetti spirituali, e le sue stanze, ed uno Trionfo de la croce di Cristo. Venice. ––– (1543) Dichiarazione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della divina Vittoria Collonna [sic], ed. R. Corso. Bologna. ––– (1546) Le rime spirituali. Venice. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. ––– (2020) La raccolta delle rime per Michelangelo, ed. V. Copello. Florence. Guigo II (1862) ‘Scala claustralium’, in S. Bernardi opera omnia, ed. J. Mabillion. Paris: 475–84. Valdés, J. de (1981) Valdés’ Two Catechisms: The Dialogue on Christian Doctrine and the Christian Instruction for Children, ed. J. C. Nieto, tr. C. D. and W. B. Jones. Lawrence, KS. 35 On this topic, see also Barnes 2013.

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––– (1988) Alfabeto Cristiano, ed. A. Prosperi. Rome. Vulgate (2010–13) The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, ed. E. Swift and A. M. Kinney, 6 vols. Cambridge, MA.

Secondary works Ardissino, E. (2015) ‘Poesia in forma di preghiera nel Cinquecento. Sulle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi (e testi) italiani 35: 35–54. Bardazzi, G. (2004) ‘Intorno alle rime di Vittoria Colonna per Michelangelo’, in La lirica del ’500. Seminario di studi in memoria di Cesare Bozzetti, ed. R. Cremante. Alessandria: 83–105. Barnes, B. (2013) ‘The understanding of a woman: Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman’, Renaissance Studies 27/5: 633–53. Bianco, M. (1998a) ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi di filologia italiana 56: 271–95. Boland, A. (1976) ‘Lectio divina et lecture spirituelle’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité: ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, IX. Paris: 470–510. Brundin, A. (2002) ‘Vittoria Colonna and the poetry of reform’, Italian Studies 57: 61–74. ––– (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Farnham. ––– (2016a) ‘Poesia come devozione: leggere le rime di Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 161–75. ––– (2016b) ‘Vittoria Colonna in manuscript’, in Companion: 39–68. Cajelli, M. (2018) ‘Una declinazione del petrarchismo nel Cinquecento: le Rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna’, Petrarchesca 6: 103–25. Campi, E. (1994) Michelangelo e Vitoria Colonna. Un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino, e altri saggi di storia della Riforma. Turin. Carusi, E. (1938) ‘Un codice sconosciuto delle “Rime spirituali” di Vittoria Colonna, appartenuto forse a Michelangelo Buonarroti’, in Atti del IV Congresso nazionale di studi romani, ed. G. Galassi Paluzzi, 5 vols. Rome: IV.231–41. Copello, V. (2015) ‘La tradizione laudistica in Vittoria Colonna’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 28: 261–308. ––– (2017a) ‘Il dialogo poetico tra Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna’, Italian Studies 62/3: 271–81. ––– (2017b) ‘Nuovi elementi su Vittoria Colonna, i cappuccini e i gesuiti’, Lettere italiane 69/2: 296–327. Corbellini, S. (2012a) ‘Instructing the soul, feeding the spirit and awakening the passion: holy writ and lay readers in late medieval Europe’, in Shaping the Bible

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in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, ed. B. Gordon and M. McLean. Leiden: 15–39. ––– (2012b) ‘“Looking in the mirror of scriptures”: reading the Bible in medieval Italy’, in ‘Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants’: The Bible for the Laity and Theologians in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Era, ed. W. François and A. den Hollander. Leuven: 21–40. ––– (2012c) ‘Uncovering the presence: religious literacies in late medieval Italy’, in Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Corbellini, M. Hoogvliet and B. Ramakers. Leiden: 68–87. Cox, V. (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. Crivelli, T. (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. D’Elia, U. R. (2006) ‘Drawing Christ’s blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59: 90–129. Doglio, M. L. (1993b) ‘L’occhio interiore e la scrittura nelle “Litere” di Vittoria Colonna’, in Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena, ed. A. Daniele. Padua: 1001–14. Dysinger, L. (1993) ‘Accepting the embrace of God: the ancient art of lectio divina’, in The Art and Vocation of Caring for People in Pain, ed. K. Schultz. Mahwah, NJ: 98–110. Forcellino, M. (2009) Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, e gli ‘spirituali’. Religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni Quaranta. Rome. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo: drawings and paintings’, in Companion: 270–313. Forni, G. (2009a) ‘Letture bibliche in Vittoria Colonna’, in Sotto il cielo della Scritture. Bibbia, retorica e letteratura religiosa (secc. XIII-XVI), ed. G. Baffetti and C. Delcorno. Florence: 215–36. Fragnito, G. (2005) ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, in Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. P. Ragionieri. Florence: 97–141. ––– (2016) ‘“Per lungo e dubbioso sentiero”: l’itinerario spirituale di Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 177–213. Girardi, M. (2018) ‘Colonna, Vittoria’, in Dizionario biblico della letteratura italiana, ed. P. Frare, G. Frasso and G. Langella. Milan: 267–72. Grande dizionario (1961-2002) Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols. Turin. Herzig, T. (2014) ‘Le donne, la Riforma e la Bibbia in Italia’, in Donne e Bibbia nella crisi dell’Europa Cattolica, ed. M. L. Giordano and A. Valerio. Trapani: 37–47. Laurenti, G. (2013a) ‘Le poetesse e la Bibbia: Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara e Gaspara Stampa’, in La Bibbia nella letteratura italiana, vol. 5, ed. P. Gibellini and N. di Nino. Brescia: 569–91.

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––– (2013b) ‘“Vuol la nostra virtù solo per fede”: echi biblici, riscritture d’autore e strategie di censura in due sonetti spirituali di Vittoria Colonna’, Schifanoia 44/45: 131–40. Leclercq, J. (1960) The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, tr. C. Misrahi. New York. Lo Sauro, A. (2007) ‘Considerazioni stilistiche e valenze tematiche sulle rime spirituali’, in Incontri con Vittoria Colonna. Atti delle Giornate di Studio 26 Gennaio – 2 Marzo 2006, ed. F. Cristelli. Colle Val d’Elsa (Siena): 183–99. Mazzetti. M. (1973) ‘La poesia come vocazione morale: Vittoria Colonna’, Rassegna della letteratura italiana 77: 58–99. Moroncini, A. (2017) Michelangelo’s Poetry and Iconography in the Heart of the Reformation. London. Mulholland, Jr, M. R. (1985) Shaped by the Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual Formation. Nashville, TN. Nagel, A. (1997) ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, The Art Bulletin 79: 647–68. Overell, A. M. (2012) ‘Pole’s piety? The devotional reading of Reginald Pole and his friends’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63/3: 458–73. Pisacane, C. (2005) ‘Recherche et oubli de soi: Vittoria Colonna interprète de l’Evangile de Jean’, in Perspectives franco-italiennes – Prospettive italo-francesi, Séminaries du CEFI 2000–2002, ed. L. Badini Confalonieri. Rome: 229–42. Prodan, S. R. (2014) Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy. New York. Ranieri, C. (2016) ‘“Delle cose de dio se delettava”. Le lettere di Vittoria Colonna tra meditazione religiosa e riflessione letteraria’, in Scrivere lettere nel Cinquecento. Corrispondenza in prosa e in versi, ed. L. Fortini, G. Izzi and C. Ranieri. Rome: 155–71. Sapegno, M. S. (2016) ‘The Rime: a textual conundrum?’, in Companion: 140–94. Scarpati C. (2004) ‘Le rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna nel codice vaticano donato a Michelangelo’, Aevum 78/3: 693–717. ––– (2005) Invenzione e scrittura. Saggi di letteratura italiana. Milan. Stock, B. (2000) ‘Lectio divina e lectio spiritualis: la scrittura come pratica contemplativa nel Medioevo’, Lettere italiane 52/2: 171–83. ––– (2011) After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text. Philadelphia. Targoff, R. (2016) ‘La volontà segreta di Vittoria Colonna: una lettera smarrita a Clemente VII’, in Sapegno: 217–24. ––– (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Toscano, T. R. (2017) ‘Per la datazione del manoscritto dei sonetti di Vittoria Colonna per Michelangelo Buonarroti’, Critica letteraria 45: 211–37.

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Valerio, A. (1991) ‘Ignazio di Loyola, Vittoria Colonna e la Bibbia’, in Ignacio de Loyola: Magister Artium en Paris, 1528–1535, ed. J. C. Baroja e A. Beristain. San Sebastián: 649–56. Vecce, C. (1992) ‘Petrarca, Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo. Note di commenti a testi e varianti di Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 101–25. Volta, N. (2018) ‘Vittoria Colonna e gli orientamenti della critica. Un bilancio degli ultimi anni (2016–2017)’, Riforma e movimenti religiosi 3: 251–76.

About the author Sarah Rolfe Prodan is Assistant Professor of French and Italian at Stanford University. Her books include Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (2014), and the co-edited volume Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe: Contexts, Concepts and Expressions (2014). Her current book project is titled Poetics of Piety.

8. ‘Inscribed Upon Their Hearts’: Copying and the Dissemination of Devotion Jessica Maratsos

Abstract The close friendship shared by Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo inspired the production of intimate gifts in the form of sonnets and presentation drawings. These works exercised a considerable fascination over their contemporaries, who sought to obtain copies of the poems and drawings in a variety of different media. Both individually crafted and mass produced, these copies possessed multiple valences for different audiences, revealing the ways in which the relationship between original and copy, function and medium, collecting and devotion intersected in the Cinquecento. This chapter explores the ways in which sonnets and drawings were appropriated by broader audiences, focusing especially on the translation of Michelangelo’s Pietà drawing into bronze paxes created for popular, liturgical use. Keywords: gift exchange, Michelangelo, paxes, Pietà

Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo Buonarroti shared a friendship that was at once incredibly intimate and remarkably public. Through discussion, letters and the exchange of gifts, they explored in new ways the relationship between personal devotion and artistic expression. Their unique bond—as well as the poems, drawings and epistles that it produced—exercised considerable fascination over their compatriots, particularly those who were part of the same circles of Italian evangelicals known as spirituali.1 For contemporary scholarship this fascination persists, and analysis of these 1 On Italian evangelism see especially Cantimori 1960; Simoncelli 1970; Firpo 1990; Caponetto 1999.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch08

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works has only further clarified the beliefs and mechanisms that characterised the networks of these reformers in the 1530s and 1540s.2 Colonna and Michelangelo used the same language to discuss the freely bestowed grace of God as they did their exchange of gifts, while the works themselves further explored critical themes of doubt, longing and the concept of sola fide through artistic and literary innovation.3 Despite, however, the inextricable links between form, content and contemplation that undergirded Colonna’s Petrarchan rime spirituali—a genre that she invented—and Michelangelo’s presentation drawings for Colonna—a genre that acquired an entirely new devotional significance in his hands—copies made after these works served a wide range of different audiences, often resulting in a refashioning of the relationship between devotion and aesthetics that they had originally embodied. 4 The fact that Colonna’s poems and Michelangelo’s drawings were so widely appropriated, copied, modified and marketed can be identified, in part, as a phenomenon of this particular historical moment. Individually both Colonna and Michelangelo were recognised as sui generis, the very models for distinctive authorship in the spheres of Cinquecento literature and the visual arts. Yet the status of copies and notions of originality were very much in flux in the f irst half of the sixteenth century. Older concepts—in which a copy might partake of the miraculous properties of the original, or serve as an adequate substitute for an inaccessible image—endured in the visual arts, while the role of imitation and emulation in literature was a critical issue debated at length by such figures as Angelo Poliziano, Paolo Cortese, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Pietro Bembo.5 Further complications were introduced by reproductive technologies, namely, the printing press and the technique of engraving, both of which 2 See in particular Campi 1994; Ferino-Pagden (ed.) 1997; Nagel 1997; Nagel 2000: 169–87; Ragionieri (ed.) 2005; D’Elia 2006; M. Forcellino 2009; Moroncini 2009. 3 This critical analogy of the gift was first explored by Nagel 1997: 647–55. 4 On Colonna as the inventor of rime spirituali see Quondam 1991: 204. On presentation and gift drawings see Wilde 1978: 145–59. For discussion of the artistic copies see Maratsos 2017; Alberti, Rovetta and Salsi (eds.) 2015; Barnes 2010: 69–85; Lewis 1992. It has been posited that certain painted copies are in fact original works by Michelangelo. M. Forcellino 2009: 61–126; A. Forcellino 2010; M. Forcellino 2016. Donati 2019: 151–74 proposes that the drawings discussed here were made in preparation for paintings executed under Michelangelo’s direction for Vittoria Colonna. For the literary dissemination see especially Crivelli 2016; Brundin 2016b. 5 Scott 1910; Santangelo (ed.) 1954. On copying and imitation in literature more broadly see Pigman 1980; Greene 1982. For discussion of concepts of originality in the arts at this time see Belting 1994: 409–90; Wood 2008; Nagel and Wood 2010; Calvillo 2013.

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were relatively well established by this point but existed alongside continuing traditions of verbal recitation, scribal publication and hand-made copies, as well as other modes of dissemination.6 In this complex landscape, how then, was the status of a copy or original to be determined? How were ideation and execution to be measured and valued? Even the classic hallmark of authenticity—the signature—was not yet used in a consistent fashion. Jan van Eyck’s insistent self-inscription on his painted panels stand out as a singular example in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century, yet it has been pointed out that the formula he used on his famous Man in a Red Turban, the phrase Als ich kann might not indicate that the image is a self-portrait (as is frequently posited), but that this actually derived from the antique phrase ut potui non sicut volui (‘as I could, not as I wished’) that was frequently used by medieval scribes in signing manuscripts regardless of whether they were the authors or merely copyists.7 Michelangelo himself only signed one of his works, the early sculpted Pietà in Saint Peter’s Basilica.8 It is still more difficult to speak of Colonna’s signature, as it were, given that none of the extant manuscript collections of her works were executed in her own hand, including that most commonly associated with her personal involvement (Vat. lat. 11539), which was given as a gift to Michelangelo.9 Yet, as this essay will explore, the appearance of Colonna’s name in print (and, conversely, the effacement of Michelangelo’s on plaquettes) illuminates the complex ways in which reputation was a factor in the dissemination of certain devotional ideals within popular culture. In moving beyond the investigation of the tight-knit sodalities of the spirituali and their associates, recent scholarship on Colonna has already demonstrated her importance in less elevated circles of print publication and distribution. Tatiana Crivelli has convincingly argued that Pietro Bembo’s criticism of the 1538 Parma publication of Colonna’s rime spirituali by the relatively obscure Filippo Pirogallo ‘is aimed not so much at the book itself, as at the unknown person responsible for the initiative and the circles in

6 For early responses to print publication see for example Richardson 1999; Eisenstein 2011. On printmaking see Tyson and Wagonheim 1986: Karpinski 1989. 7 Powell 2006: 714. 8 See Pon 1996; Wang 2004; Rubin 2006. 9 The Michelangelo manuscript is in the hand of her personal scribe, as identified in Vecce 1992: 104. An even more controversial document is the manuscript that may have been prepared for Marguerite de Navarre (Ashburnham 1153). For more on the attribution of this work see Brundin 2001: 61; Brundin 2008: 104–7; Toscano 2017: 212n7, 217–27.

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which this “sad person” moved’.10 Moreover, she points out that in this same year the itinerant Ippolito Ferrarese (whom she aptly describes as ‘a soap and book seller, wandering minstrel and storyteller’) dedicated a work he published by Pietro da Lucca ‘To Her Excellency the Marchioness of Pescara’.11 Given that Ippolito Ferrarese had no direct connections to this illustrious poet, it seems evident that he was using her name to promote da Lucca’s Opera santissima et utile a qualunque fidel christiano, capitalizing on her fame as an author of spiritual weight. Nor is this an isolated incident; Colonna’s poetry, and name, repeatedly appeared in works produced by market traders. Not surprisingly, many of these texts and collections differed dramatically, in both language and function, from Colonna’s sonnets. Certainly, for Colonna and her intimate readers, including Michelangelo, the rime spirituali were functional in that they aided in introspective contemplation. The same could also be said of the very act of making; it was evident that both Colonna and Michelangelo considered the creative process itself as an integral part of their personal religious practice. Yet it was not works, in the traditional Catholic sense, that were prioritised, but how these actions—reading, drawing, writing—might lead to greater devotional insight. Indeed, the relative emphasis of faith over works was f irmly established in spirituali circles, even if the latter was never wholly abandoned. For example, Reginald Pole counselled Colonna that she should believe as if salvation was possible through faith alone, but should act as if it depended upon good works.12 Pietro da Lucca’s text, on the other hand, demonstrates a very different set of priorities. Abigail Brundin describes this text as highly practical in nature, providing numerous specif ic recommendations for how to lead a good Christian life as a widow, and notes that it also includes ‘an apotropaic element’, namely, a long prayer in the f inal section accompanied by a rubric that claims ‘whoever says this prayer of Saint Augustine kneeling with a blessed candle in his hand for a period of forty days will receive all legitimate graces from the Virgin Mary. And he will do this for the health of his soul’.13 What is more, archival records of the Inquisition reveal that the ways in which texts might be understood as functional objects extended even to the individual’s physical engagement with the book—how it 10 11 12 13

Crivelli 2016: 75. Crivelli 2016: 80. Caponetto 1999: 97; Targoff 2018: 140. See Abigail Brundin’s chapter in the current volume (p. 274).

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was stored or carried—which could signal proper or improper usage, seemingly regardless of content.14 While historians of the book have long known that the format of a text was critical, this kind of tactile contact and ritualised praxis is much more frequently associated with visual objects, especially three-dimensional works like crucif ixes, tabernacles and devotional plaquettes. As noted above, Michelangelo’s gift drawings, like Colonna’s sonnets, were widely copied and disseminated in a variety of media—including drawings, paintings and prints—but it is the transformation of his inventions (and specifically the drawing of the Pietà now in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fig. 8.1) into the form of the plaquette that furnishes the most interesting comparison with Colonna’s appearance in pragmatic, popular texts.15 The term plaquette, referring to a one-sided, small sculptural relief, was not used during the Italian Renaissance, making it difficult to trace the precise origins of these objects that became quite popular in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.16 It should also be noted that this term, which does not presuppose a particular function, accurately reflects the wide range of roles that they fulfilled. Florence, Padua and Rome were all significant centres of production, though the works produced in these cities differed in both character and usage. The name of Donatello, with his charming portraits of the Madonna and Child, is associated with the first two, while Roman plaquettes are frequently linked to the renewed appreciation for antique gems that characterized humanist tastes in the papal city.17 Indeed, it is in this mode that the first bronze plaquettes after Michelangelo drawings were crafted. In the 1530s, before he executed his works for Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo famously presented a number of beautifully f inished drawings of mythological subjects to the nobleman, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. His chosen subjects, such as The Punishment of Tityus and The Rape of Ganymede (Fig. 8.2), have long been interpreted in light of the artist’s amorous feelings for the younger man, but they were also perfect vehicles to be transformed into the precious materials associated with antique gems and coins.18

14 15 16 17 18

Brundin, Howard, and Laven (eds.) 2018: 161-165. On copies after Michelangelo see in particular Alberti, Rovetta and Salsi (eds.) 2015. Palmer 2001: 74. See Pope-Hennessy 1964: 67; Rossi 1989; Warren 2014: 811–12. See in particular Saslow 1988; Barkan 1991.

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Fig. 8.1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, c. 1540, black chalk on paper, 11.38 in. × 7.44 in. (28.9 × 18.9 cm). Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

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Fig. 8.2. Copy after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ganymede, sixteenth century, black chalk on offwhite antique laid paper, wings of eagle incised with stylus and damaged, parts then retouched, 14.21 in. × 10.63 in. (36.1 × 27 cm). Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museums, Gifts for Special Uses Fund, 1955.75, Boston.

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Fig. 8.3. Giovanni Bernardi (copy after Michelangelo Buonarroti), The Rape of Ganymede, 1532 or after, bronze, 2.63 in. × 3.56 in. (6.7 × 9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, Washington, D.C.

In 1533 Cavalieri received a visit from Pope Clement VII and his nephew Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. The latter was so taken with the drawings that he had rock crystal copies of them made by Giovanni Bernardi, who then also cast them in bronze (Fig. 8.3).19 It is clear that in this instance the fusion of pagan subject, expensive materials and Michelangelo’s distinctive iconographic inventions resulted in objects that were ideal for the refined connoisseur who would both study them for their artistic and antiquarian qualities and display them to learned friends in order to enhance his own social and intellectual standing. A cultural milieu further from Ippolito da Ferrara’s market stalls is difficult to imagine. This explicit union of appearance and function was not, however, the norm, and plaquettes could appear in a variety of contexts: on lamps,

19 This incident is recorded in a letter written by Cavalieri to Michelangelo on 6 September 1533. Buonarroti 1965–83: IV.49. On the rock crystal copies see Bambach 2017: 154–5; Alberti, Rovetta and Salsi (eds.) 2015: 111–15, 144–9; Warren 2014: 786–7. For more on how Michelangelo’s letters and drawings to Cavalieri were disseminated see Ruvoldt 2013.

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inkstands, book covers and even sword pommels.20 Nor was subject matter necessarily definitive, and even works with religious iconography could be utilised and appreciated in a variety of different ways. For example, perhaps the most famous set of Christian plaquettes from the Cinquecento is Moderno’s silver Flagellation and Madonna and Child, now in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. While it is possible they were originally joined as a devotional diptych, in 1568 they were incorporated into an inlaid ebony writing cabinet in the newly built study of Cardinal Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia.21 Thus installed they would have been admired primarily for their artistry, an experience that would have only been enhanced by Moderno’s clear reference to the famous antique statue of the Laocoön in his figure of Christ in the Flagellation.22 Unfortunately precise records such as this are scarce, and the display and use of these objects must often be extrapolated from their physical form. In a critical essay on Renaissance medals Luke Syson posited that holes and loops found in fifteenth and sixteenth century examples (predominantly occurring in those over 5 cm in diameter) likely dated from the period of manufacture so that the medals could be hung on display, rather than placed in drawers or cabinets.23 Such holes appear with relative frequency on many plaquettes, including those most often associated with Donatello, such as the Madonna and Child in a Niche composition that is preserved in as many as twenty-two copies (Fig. 8.4).24 Allison Lee Palmer has suggested, based on the piercing and wear, that the version in the Walters Art Museum might have served as an image de chevet, namely, an image sewn onto the inside of a bed curtain.25 This does not, however, appear to be the case with the plaquettes made after Michelangelo’s Pietà, which are frequently preserved in frames that indicate their primary use as paxes—small tablets crucial to Catholic liturgy during this era. Extant bronze plaquettes featuring Michelangelo’s design are found in two main versions, often framed in one of two different styles. The first version cuts off the upright beam of the cross just above the Virgin’s 20 See Pope-Hennessy 1964: 63; Fulton 1989; Leino 2012. 21 Leino 2012: 167–8. For the aesthetics of display in Giovanni Grimani’s home see Perry 1993. 22 It is very likely that the plaquettes were originally made for Cardinal Domenico Grimani (Giovanni Grimani’s uncle), who was fascinated with the Laocöon and also owned a bronze statuette made after this ancient work by Jacopo Sansovino. Lewis 1989: 129–31. It is not certain if this work too later came into Giovanni’s possession. See Perry 1978. 23 Syson 2002: 231–4. 24 Warren 2014: 811–12. 25 Palmer 2001: 73.

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Fig. 8.4. After Donatello, Madonna and Child before a Niche, midfifteenth century, bronze, 3.94 in. × 3.06.in. (10 × 7.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington, D.C.

head, as is also common in most painted copies of the composition, and is frequently paired with a frame that combines architectural motifs—a broken pediment supported by herms and a second, arched broken pediment with a shell at the centre—associated with Michelangelo’s designs for the Porta Pia and the Palazzo dei Conservatori.26 Bracketed within the two tympana is a figure of God the Father clearly reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (Fig. 8.5). The second version contains a straight crossbeam above the Virgin’s extended arms that is surmounted by a banderole bearing the inscription ‘INRI’. In the upper left-hand corner, the moon is shown, with the sun in the upper right. The background is also further embellished with two small clouds, and the foreground with incised plants. This more elaborate rendering is typically enclosed in a frame characterised by linked volutes, garlands and central cartouche with a putto head that is sometimes referred to as a

26 Salsi 2015: 32.

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Fig. 8.5. Follower of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, mid-sixteenth century, gilt bronze, 6.62 in. × 4.5 in. (16.8 × 11.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Henry Victor Burgy, 1901, New York.

‘Sansovino frame’ (Fig. 8.6).27 Examples of the first type in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the second in the National Gallery of Art both show extensive wear in their applied gilding and still bear the handles affixed to the back that allowed the paxes to be easily carried through the church and presented to the individual congregants (Fig. 8.7).28 These physical traces of extensive tactile contact and portability attest to the fundamental role played by paxes in the Catholic liturgy. After the recitation of the Agnus Dei and before communion, Catholic worshippers participated in the Kiss of Peace. Originally a direct kiss exchanged between congregants, the potentially erotic nature of this embrace eventually led to the development of the pax in the thirteenth century, which was first used in England and France before reaching Rome 27 On this term and its problematic nature see Davis 1989: 283–4. 28 The Met plaquette also has a cameo inset at the bottom with the inscription: ‘SOCIETASS-PETRI’, referring to the confraternity that commissioned it. Bisacca, Kantar, and Newberry (eds.) 1990: 54.

184  Fig. 8.6. Central or Northern Italian, Pax with Pietà, c. 1575, gilded bronze, 7.19 in. × 4.94 in. × 2.81 in. (18.3 × 12.6 × 7.1 cm). National Gallery of Art, Gift of Claire, Monica and Antonia Geber in memory of their parents, Anthony and Margaret Mary Geber, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 8.7. Handle affixed to back of Figure 8.5.

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in the fifteenth century.29 The production of the pax as an independent liturgical—and artistic—object in its own right then reached its peak in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.30 Functioning simultaneously as a focus for physical devotion and an instrument of church ceremony, the pax operated at the crossroads of the public and the private, the anonymous and the individual, the rigid and the porous in Christian worship. On the one hand, the pax reinforced social hierarchy as it was passed in a very strict order, beginning with the celebrant, then the other clerics, before finally reaching the laity.31 On the other hand, at the moment when the worshipper’s lips came into contact with the pax the distance—temporal as well as spatial and material—between mortal and divine appeared to collapse, for, as Adrian Randolph has observed, ‘the visuality and tactility of the pax was explicitly analogous to the moment of transubstantiation and communion’.32 Moreover, as Randolph argues, during the act itself the ‘dual objectification and subjectification of beholder and pax means that both exist in a moment of hybridity’, which further reinforced the intimacy and fluidity that characterised the ceremonial act of kissing.33 At this point it is worth considering the possible reasons why Michelangelo’s Pietà imagery was so well suited for use in these complex Christian objects. Historically paxes were often adorned with images of Christ who was frequently shown as the Man of Sorrows. Originating in Byzantium, the Man of Sorrows imagery, in which Christ is shown from the waist up after death but miraculously upright in his tomb, rapidly became popular when introduced in Western Europe.34 The bust format and direct orientation of the Saviour’s body toward the worshipper engendered a sense of emotional immediacy that was absent from more narrative compositions and well suited to the pax format. (Many variants also showed Christ held upright by angels or figures of Mary and John the Baptist, which thematised the tactile contact fundamental to use of the pax (Fig. 8.8)). Additionally, this iconography, largely through representations of the Mass of Saint Gregory, became associated with the moment of transubstantiation. In Albrecht Dürer’s 1511 woodcut illustrating this miracle, Christ appears as the Man of Sorrows above the altar; aligned immediately in front of him are a pax 29 30 31 32 33 34

Randolph 2014: 217–18; Leino 2012: 163–5. Leino 2012: 165. Randolph 2014: 217. Randolph 2014: 228. Randolph 2014: 227. Nagel 2000: 49–59.

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Fig. 8.8. Paduan, Christ’s Body Held by Two Angels, fifteenth century, silvered bronze, 3.94 in. × 3.38 in. (10 × 8.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, Washington, D.C.

and the chalice with the host, an arrangement that underscored that these objects functioned as sites of potential transformation (Fig. 8.9).35 As Alexander Nagel has observed, Michelangelo’s drawing for Vittoria Colonna is a product of the artist’s longstanding attempt to reconcile the traditional format of the Man of Sorrows imagery with new narrative formulations found in scenes of deposition, lamentation and entombment.36 The resultant image simultaneously has a Christocentric focus while still affording the Virgin an essential, redemptive role in the Passion. In this respect, as has been previously noted, there are significant parallels between Michelangelo’s iconographic invention and Colonna’s Pianto sopra la passione di Cristo, first published in 1556 but likely written in the years 1538–41.37 Colonna’s text is rich in evocative description that correlates to the heightened emotions of the lamentation, yet, as Abigail Brundin has pointed out, these emotions ‘are confusingly double-sided, suspending her midway between

35 Nagel 2000: 58; Randolph 2014: 229. 36 Nagel 1997: 655–65; Nagel 2000: 49–82, 113–68. 37 For the dating of the text see Simoncelli 1970: 209–13.

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Fig. 8.9. Albrecht Dürer, The Mass of Saint Gregory, 1511, woodcut, 11.56 in. × 8.12 in. (29.4 × 20.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1917, New York.

grief and jubilation’.38 Moreover, Michelangelo’s combination of Christ’s sacrificial body and the Virgin’s maternal love was also perfectly in keeping with the visual language of the pax, for in addition to numerous images of the Man of Sorrows, another popular motif found on paxes was the Madonna and Child. As it was passed to the entire congregation, Michelangelo’s touching union of intimacy, joy and grief reached an exceptionally broad audience, and became a part of ritualised practice in much the same way that Colonna’s texts did when incorporated into popular anthologies. There are, however, some crucial differences as well that deserve to be addressed. 38 Brundin 2008: 138.

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Fig. 8.10. Marcantonio Raimondi after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Naked Man Viewed from Behind Climbing a River Bank, c. 1509, engraving, 8.25 in. × 5.38 in. (20.9 × 13.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anonymous Gift, 1929, New York.

Unlike the popular texts that cited Colonna’s name, even if they did not always, in fact, present any of her own work, the paxes after the Pietà replicated key iconographic features of Michelangelo’s drawing, but never bore his name. Nor was this uncommon. Devotional plaquettes in general, even those not known to have been used in church liturgy, were not marked with an artist’s signature.39 An intriguing paradox thus results, in which the object’s functional purpose and authorial origin might have been seen to be at odds. This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that this was not true of artistic copies in general; indeed, the most popular medium for copying at the time, the engraved print, was one of the earliest venues wherein the notion of artistic invention, as opposed to execution, was explicitly acknowledged, and this first occurred in a print made after a 39 Palmer 2001: 75.

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Fig. 8.11. Nicolas Beatrizet after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, 1547, engraving, 14.75 in. × 10.31 in. (37.5 × 26.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1966, New York.

work by Michelangelo. In about 1509 Marcantonio Raimondi executed an engraving that clearly extracted a figure from Michelangelo’s now lost Battle of Cascina cartoon, which he labelled with the inscription: ‘IV.MI.AG. FL.’ This is commonly interpreted as shorthand for ‘invenit’ preceding an abbreviation for Michelangelo Florentinus. On a line below Raimondi has also included his own monogram (Fig. 8.10). 40 Subsequently this formula was also applied to prints made after Michelangelo’s devotional works, as is evident in the vast majority of prints that copied Michelangelo’s drawings for Colonna. One particularly interesting example is the 1547 engraving executed by Nicolas Beatrizet after the Pietà (Fig. 8. 11). The French printmaker has maintained all of the essential elements of Michelangelo’s original, including the upper portion of the y-shaped cross that has been cut off from the drawing now preserved in Boston, but he has enclosed them in an elaborate framework that combines a variety 40 Landau and Parshall 1994: 143–4.

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of architectural elements, including Doric columns and curved volutes, surmounted by an angelic putto and other Christian symbols. The deliberately antique aspects of the frame would have appealed to the learned connoisseurs who likely collected the print as an example of Michelangelo’s invenzione, whose authorship was clearly marked by the inscription ‘MANGELUS INVÈ’ at the base of the image. Yet this particular combination of classical and Christian features ultimately results in an image in which artistic and devotional existed side by side. It seems likely that this flexibility is in part due to the fluid nature of the print at this time, which was not bound by any set conventions, unlike the pax. The pax versions of Michelangelo’s Pietà also introduce the critical question of medium and the role it played in the function and appreciation of copies. Made of bronze and often gilded, the pax might initially seem to belong to those elite collections containing antique gems and cameos, carved rock crystal and expensive statuettes, yet of course bronze was also a favoured material for public commemoration, its durability making it particularly suitable for objects that were made to be handled by an entire congregation. Even the wearing in gilding might have been seem as a testament to their efficacy, as Randolph suggests: ‘the softening of metal through repeated contact was an additive form of subtraction, with the altered patination offering physical proof of use and history: added memory through social use and physical reduction’. 41 These intersecting attributes emphasize the appeal to tactile experience even more than the few relief copies of the Pietà that were carved in marble—characterised by their weight and monumentality—would have done. Transformed from paper to metal, two dimensions to three dimensions, and from a unique drawing crafted by the artist’s own hand for the private devotional attention of a specific recipient to a mass-produced plaquette that was used by an entire congregation as part of standardised liturgical ritual, one could reach the conclusion that these copies in pax form could not be further from the original Pietà in manufacture, function and audience. Yet in closing it is worth returning to the language employed by Colonna herself to re-examine how certain aspects of the pax would have resonated with the complex issues of faith that she and Michelangelo explored. The central paradox of Christ’s flesh as the ultimate source of spiritual transcendence was a critical theme in Colonna’s Christian works, both poetry and prose, which marked a shift from her treatment of the physical 41 Randolph 2014: 228.

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body in her earlier Petrarchan love sonnets written about her deceased husband.42 As noted above, the Pianto in particular explored the fraught role played by the Virgin’s mourning over the dead Christ within the context of spirituali devotional practice. Despite the emphasis by certain significant reformers, such as the preacher Bernardino Ochino, on Mary’s steadfast and unwavering faith at the Crucifixion, Colonna probes the vacillating line between her extreme, maternal grief and her exultation at Christ’s future ascension. 43 Within this internal dialogue, physical proximity with Christ’s body (and a concomitant emphasis on his mortal suffering) is most closely affiliated with her empathetic response, as demonstrated in this passage from the Pianto: ‘That fire of love and torment that consumed and penetrated the intimate reaches of her soul … now at the touch of the sacred body of Christ spread through her to its maximum extent, and was released through her eyes in more bitter tears, and through her mouth in more burning sighs’. 44 A similar sentiment is expressed in sonnet 42 in Michelangelo’s gift manuscript: Vergine e madre, il tuo figlio sul petto stringesti morto, ma il fido pensero scorgea la gloria e’l bel trionfo altero ch’ei riportava d’ogni spirito eletto. L’aspre sue piaghe e il dolce umile aspetto t’accendeva il tormento acerbo e fero, poi la vittoria grande e l’onor vero portava a l’alma nuovo alto diletto. 45 Virgin and mother, you clasped your dead son upon your breast, but in your faithful mind you saw the glory and the holy victory that he brought to every elected soul. 42 The disembodied nature of her earlier verse is emphasised by Brundin 2008: 83. For a proposal that the rime amorose deal more concretely with the erotics of the body and desire see McHugh 2013. 43 On Colonna and Ochino see Campi 1994; D’Elia 2006; Brundin 2008; Forcellino 2009: 70–3, 204–10. 44 As cited and translated in Nagel 2000: 180–1. 45 The translation is cited from Colonna 2005: 88–9 (S1: 108, per the numbering system of Colonna 1982). The association between Christ’s suffering and Colonna’s poetic vocation as bound to spiritual revelation is perhaps most famously stated in the proemial sonnet in Michelangelo’s gift manuscript. See Colonna 2005: 56–7 (S1: 1).

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His bitter wounds and sweet humble countenance increased your harsh and potent torment, but the great triumph of true honour brought to your soul a new and pure delight.

One can imagine the worshipper experiencing a similar moment of ecstatic union in enacting the Kiss of Peace. Not only would their lips come into physical contact with a tactile representation of Christ’s flesh, but also, they would echo the embracing act of the Virgin who holds his body upright between her legs. Another signif icant trope that appeared within Colonna’s sonnets, including a number of those in the gift manuscript, is the inscription or seal of Christ—his grace, his love, his faith—upon the worshipper’s heart. The specif ically Christian appropriation of this metaphor originates in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians and it was taken up by subsequent authors and theologians, including Theodore the Studite, who in his defence of icons makes the analogy with the material process of replication explicit in his discussion of the image and prototype as likened to impression and seal: ‘Or take the example of a signet ring engraved with the imperial image, and let it be impressed upon wax, pitch and clay. The impression is one and the same in the several materials, which, however, are different with respect to each other … The same applies to the likeness of Christ irrespective of the material upon which it is represented’. 46 In Colonna’s most extended use of this metaphor the f inal six lines read: Onde quel ch’avrà in lui le luci fisse, non quel ch’intese meglio o che più lesse volumi in terra, in ciel sarà beato. In carte questa legge non si scrisse, ma con la stampa sua nel cor purgato col fuoco del suo amor Iesù l’impresse. 47 Thus he who can fix his eyes upon God, not he who better understood or who read more books on earth, will be blessed in heaven. 46 As cited in Vikan 1989: 49. See further discussion in Nagel and Wood: 30–1. 47 The translation is cited from Colonna 2005: 119 (S1: 78). Another vivid example occurs in a sonnet on Saint Francis. See Colonna 2005: 83 (S1: 123).

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This law was not written upon paper, but rather it was imprinted by Jesus with his seal and with the fire of his love upon the purified soul.

Juxtaposed to the intellectual act of reading is the implicit physicality of the impression—the seal pressed into the wax of the soul—that forms a striking parallel with the very process by which bronze paxes were likely made, namely, the sand-casting technique. Here a wax model would be created, around which a sand mould would be crafted and left to dry. This would later be opened, revealing the impression of the wax on the sand, creating a negative image mould that would then be used to cast numerous copies in bronze or other metals. It is possible to imagine that Colonna and her circle might have appreciated precisely these qualities embodied by the pax, particularly given the attention she paid to Michelangelo’s manufacture; in a letter describing the drawing of Christ on the Cross she noted that she ‘could never explain how subtly and miraculously it is made’ despite subjecting the work to close scrutiny ‘in the light, and with a lens and a mirror’.48 Certainly, these words rhetorically serve to exalt Michelangelo’s draughtsmanship, but they also describe the observational methods of the connoisseur. Moreover, in the same letter she affirms the power of the image to work in physical terms, claiming that it ‘has certainly crucified in my mind all other pictures I have ever seen’. 49 This nexus of metaphors, which evokes the language of artistic making and imagines Christ’s love as manifest through tactile contact allows us to view the paxes in a new light. Perhaps not merely functional in the liturgical sense, they represent a potential intersection between the spheres of popular religious practice and private spirituali beliefs, even when, unlike Colonna’s poems, they are no longer marked by Michelangelo’s name.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden.

48 ‘certo io non potrei mai explicar quanto sottilmente et mirabilmente è fatta … Io l’ho visto al lume et col vetro et col specchio’. Colonna 1892: 208 (letter CXXIII, to Michelangelo, 1539–40). 49 ‘et visto il crucifixo, il qual certamente ha crucifixe nella memoria mia quale altri picture viddi mai’. Colonna 1892: 208.

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Manuscripts Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 11539.

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Cantimori, D. (1960) Prospettive di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento. Bari. Caponetto, S. (1999) The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, tr. A. C. Tedeschi and J. Tedeschi. Kirksville, MO. Crivelli, T. (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. D’Elia, U. R. (2006) ‘Drawing Christ’s blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59: 90–129. Davis, C. (1989) ‘Jacopo Sansovino and the Italian plaquette’, Studies in the History of Art 22: 265–89. Donati, A. (2019) Vittoria Colonna e l’eredità degli spirituali. Rome. Eisenstein, E. (2011) Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending. Philadelphia. Ferino-Pagden, S. (ed.) (1997) Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos (exhibition catalogue). Vienna. Firpo, M. (1990) Tra alumbrados e ‘spirituali’: Studi su Juan de Valdés e il Valdesianesimo nella crisi religiosa del ‘500 italiano. Florence. Forcellino, A. (2010) ‘La “Pietà” di Ragusa’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 5: 105–42, 375–85. Forcellino, M. (2009) Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, e gli ‘spirituali’. Religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni Quaranta. Rome. ––– (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo: drawings and paintings’, in Companion: 270–313. Fulton, C. (1989) ‘The Master IO. F.F. and the function of plaquettes’, Studies in the History of Art 22: 143–62. Greene, T. M. (1982) The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven and London. Karpinski, C. (1989) ‘The print in thrall to its original: a historiographic perspective’, Studies in the History of Art 20: 101–9. Landau, D. and P. Parshall (1994) The Renaissance Print: 1470–1550. New Haven. Leino, M. (2012) Fashion, Devotion and Contemplation: The Status and Functions of Italian Renaissance Plaquettes. Bern. Lewis, D. (1989) ‘The plaquettes of “Moderno” and his followers’, Studies in the History of Art 22: 105–41. ––– (1992) ‘Genius disseminated: The influence of Michelangelo’s works on contemporary sculpture’, in The Genius of the Sculptor in Michelangelo’s Work, ed. P. Marani and P. Théberge. Montreal: 179–99. Maratsos, J. (2017) ‘Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the afterlife of intimacy’, The Art Bulletin 99: 69–101. McHugh, S. (2013) ‘Rethinking Vittoria Colonna: gender and desire in the rime amorose’, The Italianist 33/3: 345–60.

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Scott, I. (1910) Controversies over the Imitation of Cicero as a Model for Style and Some Phases of their Influences on the Schools of the Renaissance. New York. Simoncelli, P. (1970) Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento: questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico. Rome. Syson, L. (2002) ‘Holes and loops: the display and collection of medals in Renaissance Italy’, Journal of Design History 15: 229–44. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Toscano, T. R. (2017) ‘Per la datazione del manoscritto dei sonetti di Vittoria Colonna per Michelangelo Buonarroti’, Critica letteraria 45: 211–37. Tyson, G. and S. Wagonheim (1986) Print and Culture in the Renaissance: Essays on the Advent of Printmaking. Newark. Vecce, C. (1992) ‘Petrarca, Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo. Note di commenti a testi e varianti di Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’, in Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 101–25. Vikan, G. (1989) ‘Ruminations on edible icons: originals and copies in the art of Byzantium’, Studies in the History of Art 20: 47–59. Wang, A. (2004) ‘Michelangelo’s signature’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 35: 447–73. Warren, J. (2014) Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Vol. III. Plaquettes. Oxford. Wilde, J. (1978) Michelangelo: Six Lectures. Oxford. Wood, C. (2008) Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art. Chicago.

About the author Jessica Maratsos is currently the Keith Sykes Research Fellow in Italian Studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She has recently completed her first book on the Florentine painter Jacopo da Pontormo and has previously published articles in Art History and The Art Bulletin.

9. Titian, Colonna, and the Gender of Pictorial Devotion Christopher J. Nygren

Abstract Titian made a painting of Mary Magdalene for Vittoria Colonna, perhaps identif iable with a painting in the Pitti Palace. Despite considerable scholarly attention over the last thirty years, scholars have not reached a consensus about most aspects of this exchange. Central to the debate has been the question of nudity: was it possible to have a devotional image that so knowingly exhibits female flesh? Can a painting gleefully subvert the rules of decorum and still discharge its function as a devotional image? Recent scholarship on the visual culture of female spirituality at this time helps illuminate how the picture operated within contemporary devotional culture, as does attention to Colonna’s own religious verse. Keywords: Titian, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, Mary Magdalene, female devotion, patronage, religious poetry, pornography

What does a devotional picture look like? This question may seem straightforward, but an ever-increasing body of art historical research into early modern devotion makes clear that it is only deceptively so. 1 This essay seeks to illuminate the challenges of discussing early modern devotional images by focusing on the f igure of Vittoria Colonna and her relationship to Titian. Around 1531 Titian produced a painting of the Penitent Magdalene for Vittoria Colonna (Fig. 9.1), which has often been identif ied as the painting now in the Galleria Palatina at Palazzo Pitti. Whether or not this specif ic painting made its way to Colonna is 1 See, among the most recent, Galandra Cooper 2016; Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018; Periti 2016; Nygren 2020: 3-21 for relevant bibliography.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch09

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Fig. 9.1. Titian, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1531, oil on wood panel. Galleria Palatina di Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

complicated, but it is clear that if this is not Colonna’s painting, Titian produced for her a painting quite like it. Such acts of self-citation or copying were common in Titian’s workshop at the time; thus, we shall concentrate our analysis on the Pitti painting on the assumption that it closely resembles the picture for Colonna. 2 In focusing on the Pitti Magdalene I hope to accomplish three things. First, I want to clarify a few 2

Rearick 2001; Loh 2007: 17–52; Aikema and Tagliaferro 2009; and Donati 2019: 71–4.

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important points regarding the relationship between Titian and Colonna. Recently, scholars have gravitated toward understanding Colonna as a patron in the exchange with Titian. However, reading the documentary record against other commissions that Titian undertook in the 1530s shows that this is not a simple case of art patronage. Second, I want to examine our understanding of what devotional pictures looked like in the middle of the sixteenth century. Numerous scholars have taken issue with Titian’s painting for Vittoria Colonna, suggesting that it is little more than thinly veiled pornography.3 I resist this secularizing assessment of Titian’s painting. The third movement of this essay will reinsert Titian’s sensual devotional painting into the context of female spirituality in early sixteenth-century Northern Italy. This will allow for a re-articulation of the question posed above: what were the salient features of devotional images produced for women in this period? Does the painting that Titian produced for Vittoria Colonna align with or deviate from those norms? This approach circumvents some of the more contentious ways of analysing Titian’s Magdalenes and allows for a more contextualized understanding of his devotional paintings.

Titian and Colonna: the history of a missing connection The documentary record surrounding Titian’s painting for Colonna begins with a letter sent from Federico Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, to Titian on 5 March 1531: [… vorrei che me faceste una Sta. Maddalena lacrimosa più che si può, in un quadro della grandezza che è questo, o dua dita piu, e che vi metteste ogni studio in farlo bello, il che a voi non sarà gran cosa che non lo potreste farlo altramente, quando ben voleste, sì in fornirlo presto, che verrei [sic] mandarlo a donare allo Illmo. Signor Marchese del Guasto … che ve ne priego grandemente, servirmi in ciò … facendola di sorte, chel parà dono onorevole, essendo mandata da me ad un Signore tale come è quel Marchese: et sopra tutto fatemela avere presto. 4 I would like you to make me a Saint [Mary] Magdalene, as lachrymose as can be, in a painting the same size as this one [of Saint Jerome], or 3 4

For the historiography of this debate, see D’Elia 2005: 84–106. Och 2001: 207 (Appendix, Letter 1), translation Goffen 1997: 177 (amended slightly).

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two fingers larger, and that you make every effort to make it beautiful, which for you will not be remarkable as you cannot do otherwise, when you really want to; also furnishing it promptly, because I wish to send it to be given to the most Illustrious Lord Marchese del Guasto [del Vasto], … and I beg you very warmly to serve me in this matter … making it so that it appears an honourable gift, being sent by me to a lord such as that marchese: and above all, let me have it soon.

A serious problem immediately presents itself when we use this letter to string together a causal chain from Titian to Vittoria Colonna embodied in the Pitti painting. Namely, Gonzaga told Titian that he would gift the picture to the Marchese del Vasto; he is referring Alfonso d’Avalos, Vittoria Colonna’s younger cousin by marriage, not the Marchesa. By this letter, the picture is destined not for a female beholder but for a male beholder of great stature.5 Now, a letter written by Gonzaga to Vittoria Colonna one week later makes clear that he was being evasive in his correspondence with Titian, since the picture was clearly destined for her. Gonzaga wrote to the Marchesa: … me ha detto che ella desidera d’haver una pittura bella et di mano di pittore excellente d’una figura de S.ta Maddalena, ho subito mandato a Vinegia e scritto a Titiano, quale è forse il più excellente in quella arte che a’ nostri tempi se ritrovi et è tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande instantia a volerne far una bellissima, lagrimosa più che si può, et farmela haver presto; et alla excellentia del pittore et alla instantia ch’io li ne ho fatta, tengo che l’opera serrà perfettissima, et spero d’haverla forsi de que da Pasca, et havutola la inviarò a V. S., alla qual de continuo me racomando.6 I have been told that you desire a beautiful painting by the hand of an excellent painter of the figure of Saint Mary Magdalene, and I immediately sent to Venice and wrote to Titian, who is perhaps the most excellent master to be found today in that art, and who is all mine, soliciting him with great insistence to execute one [painting of a Magdalene] most beautiful, as lachrymose as she can be, and to let me have it quickly. And because of the excellence of that painter and the insistence that I 5 Agosti: 2005; Donati 2019: 72. 6 Colonna 1892: 66–7 (letter XLII, from Mantua, 11 March 1531). For a slightly different translation, see Goffen 1997: 177.

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showed him, I believe that work will be most perfect and I hope to have it here perhaps by Easter and to have it sent to your ladyship, to whom I continue to commend myself.

The painting was shipped to Mantua in April and delivered to Ischia in May.7 It is possible that Titian learned through back channels of Gonzaga’s desire to present the picture to Colonna. However, Titian never had any direct interaction with her. Even when she wrote in gratitude for the painting, she sent her thanks to Gonzaga rather than to Titian.8 Already we see that the linkage between Titian and Vittoria Colonna is complicated. Moreover, it is questionable whether the Pitti Magdalene is the painting described in the correspondence between Titian, Gonzaga and Colonna. Now, it is clear that Vittoria Colonna was given a painting of the Penitent Magdalene by Titian’s hand in the early 1530s and that the Pitti Magdalene was clearly made by Titian in the early 1530s. Given these two facts, the siren-song of linking Titian to one of the archetypal Renaissance Women has proven nearly impossible to resist. Hans Tietze was one of the f irst modern scholars to connect the Pitti Magdalene to Colonna.9 Subsequently, scholars have often obfuscated, opting to attenuate the linkage between Titian and Colonna with a few modifiers such as ‘likely’, ‘possibility’ or ‘möglich’, thus allowing the implication that Titian’s painting was created for Vittoria Colonna to carry the day.10 Titian’s Pitti Magdalene entered the Medici collection in the early seventeenth century directly from the della Rovere collection in Urbino; there is no documentary evidence connecting the painting directly to Vittoria Colonna. Harold Wethey offered a tantalizing and enduring suggestion for how the painting might be connected to Colonna, suggesting that she gifted the painting to her dear friend Eleonora Gonzaga, who in turn may have passed it along to her son, Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere of Urbino.11 A number of scholars, including Rona Goffen, have supported this hypothesis, and it is one that cannot be disproven definitively.12 Rather, we are faced with the odd truth that Colonna’s painting entirely disappears from the documentary record: she lived the last two decades of her life traveling between different convents and a probate inventory of her possessions 7 8 9 10 11 12

Och 2001: 211–12 (letters 12 and 14). Och 2001: 212 (letter 14). Tietze 1950: 371. Hope 2003: 122n2; Ingenhoff-Danhäuser 1984: 85; Wood 2001: 195. Wethey 1969–75: I.150. Goffen 1997: 173–7.

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executed upon her death reveals that she did not cling to the traditional trappings of her noble birth. The paintings of the Magdalene she had received from both Titian and Michelangelo are not mentioned in that inventory and it is possible, perhaps even likely, that she had given them away sometime in the 1530s or 1540s.13 Moreover, as Goffen notes, the Magdalene in Urbino is an oddity since there are no documents attesting to Guidobaldo having commissioned the painting ‘despite a plethora of documentation regarding other works ordered from Titian in this same period’.14 Documents confirm that a painting by Titian of the Penitent Magdalene was present in Urbino in the sixteenth century, which Vasari saw in Duke Guidobaldo della Rovere’s guardaroba, the same room where he saw the Venus of Urbino.15 In all likelihood, this is the Pitti painting. While this could have been given to the Gonzaga family by Vittoria Colonna, it seems imprudent to place stock in that hypothesis given the lack of any supporting documentary evidence.16 Nevertheless, Colonna’s picture of the Penitent Magdalene is certainly from the same family of images as the Pitti painting, meaning that the Pitti picture is, if nothing else, a useful surrogate for discussing the one owned by Colonna. In light of this complicated and ambiguous fact pattern, we are left to ask: what now? What headway can be made in the exploration of Colonna’s position in the broader landscape of sixteenth-century Italian art? Is there a creative way to approach the linkage between Titian and Colonna that will offer some sort of hermeneutical insight rather than merely observing that two of the most prominent figures of the Italian Renaissance were two among many nodes in a vast network of friendship and patronage that spanned the entire Italian peninsula? I would like to suggest that two manoeuvres might unlock new perspectives. First, we shall consider whether or not the de-coupling of Titian from Colonna must be considered final and decisive. I will suggest that something can be gained by seriously considering the mediated relationship between the painter and Marchesa. Subsequently, I shall examine how Titian’s skill in producing sensitive devotional images intersected with the particular form of corporealized spirituality that was emerging among prominent women in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century.

13 14 15 16

Targoff 2018: 266. Goffen 1997: 177. Vasari 1996: II.789. Binotto 2013: 150–2.

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The charge and the brief in the epistolary mode Colonna and Titian never engaged with one another directly. Nevertheless, Colonna continues to be described as the ‘patron’ who ‘commissioned’ a painting by Titian.17 Marjorie Och has been particularly forceful in arguing that we must recognize Colonna’s agency in commissioning Titian. According to Och, Colonna used Federico Gonzaga as an intermediary to facilitate the commission.18 In this account, the subject and manner of painting were decided by Colonna and communicated to the artist. However, the evidence supporting this reading is only indirect; as the letter cited above makes clear, Gonzaga learned the subject matter Colonna desired, but the choice of artist and the details of the depiction were not specified. While it is understandable that, in recent decades, scholars have sought to recuperate women’s role in early modern Italian culture by pointing to how exceptional figures like Isabella d’Este and Vittoria Colonna exerted their agency in commissioning works of art by leading artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian (among others), I believe it is important to resist the insidious presupposition that Colonna’s involvement in this commission is an all or nothing proposition. In truth, most artistic commissions were far less direct than modern scholarship often allows. Understanding that Colonna was not a patron but a recipient in an act of oblique exchange sheds light on this indirect and circuitous affair. Far from divesting her of all agency, appreciating this fact fundamentally reformulates the incident. Rather than be a moment of artistic patronage—a titanic wrestling of strong-headed personalities—this shifts the episode into what Shira Brisman has, in her recent study of Albrecht Dürer, called the epistolary mode of artistic address. What Brisman means to identify with this cunning turn of phrase is the complicated concatenation of artistic, economic and political agencies that generated the conditions of possibility in early modern art. Drawing on the social life of letters, Brisman’s epistolary mode of artistic address ‘is marked by an appeal from artist to viewer that is direct and intimate at the same time that it acknowledges the distance that defers its message’.19 It leaves room for the unexpected detours that make up the social life of a work of art—its successful delivery, or its being waylaid; its ability to create a kinship between artist and beholder that far exceeds its initial intent, or its potential failure to communicate. As 17 See, for instance, Targoff 2018: 185. 18 Och 2001: 197–9. 19 Brisman 2017: 1.

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a category of analysis, the epistolary mode sensitizes us to the unique dispensation of early modern devotional pictures, which were meant to be intimate missives directed at a public of one. Yet, they clearly served a semi-public function as prestige objects. While a devotional image may address an individual, its message must be generalizable—perhaps even universalizable—if it is to discharge its function. Artists were acutely aware of the difficulty of producing such images. In analysing works of art produced in the epistolary mode, the modern art historian becomes aware of the distance between ‘the moment of making and the time of arrival’—the gap that exists between the creative energy poured into the picture and the prolonged, repeated acts of viewing undertaken at a different time, in a different place, by a different person.20 Titian was particularly adept at negotiating the challenges of the epistolary mode—of making works of art that succeeded upon arrival in a place and time that was occluded from his view, a context made up of idiosyncratic social agents whose foibles were unknown to him and whose reactions he was challenged to anticipate. The few occasions on which Titian failed to foresee the negative reaction of distant beholders have been well-studied; there is nothing to suggest that any of Titian’s Magdalenes missed the mark in this way.21 Titian’s Pitti Magdalene is one of those missives, sent from Venice to Mantua but ultimately bound for Ischia, a place Titian never visited and had little incentive to understand. Titian produced a devotional picture that was, within the parameters of the epistolary mode of address, a bespoke icon that presented the fleshy female body as a site of intense devotion. How he did this will become clear. But first we must pause for a moment to consider the category of picture that he was charged with producing. Titian received very little instruction from Federico Gonzaga: he was given a subject (a Magdalene, as lachrymose as can be), a size (about the same as the Jerome), a generic request for quality (make it beautiful), and a timeline (as quickly as possible). In a perspicacious attempt to describe how artistic creativity unfolded in an era when artists did not enjoy the sort of creative freedom afforded within the modern art market, Michael Baxandall has suggested that we think of the production of artworks as being divided into the Charge and the Brief. The Charge is comprised of constraints not chosen by the painter, often including the subject, size, and other basic elements. As Baxandall notes, ‘the Charge is featureless’, 20 Brisman 2017: 2. 21 Von Rosen 2001: 434–7.

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for it is merely a set of vague notions that have not yet taken on concrete, material forms.22 In his Brief, the painter responds to these constraints by producing pictorial marks on a surface that respond to the Charge by producing ‘visual interest’ directed to that end.23 If the Charge is unfolded in the impersonal bureaucratic language of a contract laying out stipulations and constraints, by contrast ‘the painter’s formulation of a Brief is a very personal affair indeed’.24 If we consider Gonzaga’s Charge—Magdalene! Beautiful! Quickly! Lachrymose!—Titian’s Brief is a peculiar pictorial object, an unexpected, unpredicted response to the Charge. Titian mustered an array of pictorial resources to produce a response that—it is important to remember—did not yet exist. In retrospect (and in light of the numerous iterations Titian painted over the decades), this picture may seem like an imminently foreseeable response to Gonzaga’s Charge. But it was not. Most obviously, the Pitti Magdalene is nude while all of Titian’s other paintings of the saint show her at least partially clothed. And this is where scholars have been stymied for over a generation. How does this picture align with the category of devotional images? The phrase ‘devotional image’ is frequently used when describing pre-modern works of art believed to have served a religious and disciplinary function. Despite its widespread usage by art historians, a single, satisfactory def inition of what constituted a ‘devotional image’ has not emerged. In the early twentieth century, Erwin Panofsky suggested that devotional images produce ‘contemplative descent’ in the beholder. 25 Subsequently, numerous scholars have sought to retool this def inition. Many sixteenth-century Italian devotional images sought to incite compassion in the beholder, either by focusing on the mutilated body of Christ or the Virgin’s suffering as she watched her son’s torture. Correggio’s painting of the Ecce Homo combines both elements into a compact and satisfying composition that allows for both Marian and Christological devotion (Fig. 9.2). Operating according to a logic of mimetic identif ication between the subject inside the picture and the beholder outside of the picture, it induces the faithful into a posture—a disposition—of compassion. Recall that compassion literally means ‘to suffer with’—cum

22 23 24 25

Baxandall 1985: 44. Baxandall 1985: 43. Baxandall 1985: 47. Panofsky 1927.

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Fig. 9.2. Antonio Allegri (called Correggio), Ecce Homo with Pilate and Virgin Mary Fainting, c. 1525–30, oil on panel, 99 × 80 cm. The National Gallery, London.

passio.26 Such pictures offer one approach to answering the question, What does a devotional picture look like? By this logic, devotional pictures are relatively straightforward, playing on the affective relationship between image and beholder. To call such paintings devotional pictures is not necessarily to suggest that we know a lot about the historical context 26 Von Simpson 1953.

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Fig. 9.3. Lorenzo Lotto, Saint Catherine, 1522, oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

of their display or even their modes of use. Instead, it is largely focused on formal and iconographic cues which, we suppose, offer insight into modes of use. However, as we continue to probe, the operational def inition of devotional images as inciting compassion becomes more problematic. Must all devotional images function in the same way? Certainly not. What do we expect from them? Some, like Correggio’s Ecce Homo, offer a spur to compassion.27 Others invite the faithful to engage in imitation of an exemplary, sanctif ied forebear (Fig. 9.3), or offer the opportunity 27 Switzer 2012: 66–114.

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Fig. 9.4. Titian, Judith / Salome, c. 1516, oil on canvas. Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome.

for ethical stylization (Fig. 9.4). 28 Still others could serve as a form of didactic chastisement, such as Nicolò de’ Barbari’s painting of Christ and the Adulteress (Fig. 9.5), which it has been argued served as a reminder to the patron’s wife of her obligation to maintain a chaste marriage. 29 In Titian’s hands, the same subject could serve as a prompt to sincere,

28 Nygren 2014. 29 Engel 2012: 153–68.

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Fig. 9.5. Nicolò de’ Barbari, Christ and the Adulteress, c. 1505, oil on panel. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Rome.

Fig. 9.6. Titian, Christ and the Adulteress, c. 1513, oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

internal conversion (Fig. 9.6).30 All of these pictures can reasonably be said to support the work of devotion. Yet they all do so in distinct ways. There is no universal strategy. 30 Nygren 2020: 91–101.

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The more we press on the idea of devotional images, the more that term begins to resemble Justice Potter Stewart’s shorthand for identifying hardcore pornography: ‘I know it when I see it’.31 Of course, such a definition is essentially useless within the realm of legal argumentation and enforcement. What is titillating or erotic to one viewer may leave another viewer entirely unmoved. This became an issue in the 2010 Supreme Court Case United States vs. Stevens, which considered so-called ‘crush’ or ‘snuff’ videos.32 It will suffice to note that eight out of nine justices were able to reasonably imagine that videos of animals being crushed to death under the heel of a human foot could serve as an erotic enticement for some viewers, though likely not for the justices themselves. Given that rationale, these videos now enter into the realm of the pornographic and therefore are protected, artistic speech rather than brazen documentation of animal cruelty.33 Of course, this takes us far from the realm of early modern devotional picture, but there is a purpose in raising the definition of pornography, for it illustrates how quickly and inexorably problems of categorization arise any time we begin to talk about whether a certain type of image does or does not exist. If we agree that the category of ‘devotional images’ has salience, then we are irrepressibly forced to address the question: do exemplars X and Y fit into that category? Titian’s Pitti Magdalene stretches the intuitive understanding most scholars have of what constituted a devotional image in sixteenth-century Italy. As Heather Sexton Graham summarizes: ‘Several modern scholars have struggled to understand what kind of religious experience was intended by the extreme sensuality of the Pitti Magdalene—was this image intended as an earnest devotional work or was it thinly veiled “high-class pornography”?’34 Along these lines, Rona Goffen described the picture as ‘a precarious balance of flesh and spirit’.35 All of this leads a scholar like Andrea Donati to assert that Titian’s painting was ‘far from the devotional parameters of Vittoria Colonna’.36 On the other hand, Bernard Aikema takes quite seriously the devotional implications of the Magdalene, but the circuitous nature of his interpretation is indicative of the difficulty with which Titian’s Magdalene slots into the predominant understanding of devotional images. For Aikema the painting is a ‘moralizing work’ aimed at 31 32 33 34 35 36

Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964. United States v. Stevens 2010. Knopp 2011. Sexton Graham 2008: 140. Goffen 1997: 172. Donati 2019: 74.

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men ‘who could gain merit by overcoming the temptation of the sensuous depiction’.37 In this reading, the picture is a tempting object whose ultimate goal is to become self-defeating: the beholder who is properly trained and possesses the correct devotional disposition will no longer wish to gaze upon it. We do well to ask: if we have such difficulty assimilating a painting like the Pitti Magdalene into our definition of devotional images, does the fault lay with the painting itself or with our understanding of how devotional images operated in the Renaissance? I submit the latter is the case: art historians generally have an impoverished understanding of how pictorial aids supported the work of devotion in the early modern period, and the discipline’s struggle to accommodate Titian’s Magdalene is evidence of this. It is well known that the High Renaissance—however we define it— brought about lasting changes to the artistic and representational economies of European art.38 Artists like Raphael and Michelangelo explored new modes of integrating classical aesthetics and learning into Christian images. However, in most accounts of early modern European art, one of the unintended collateral effects of the High Renaissance was a questioning of the validity of the idea of devotional images. The traditional narrative posits that Protestant Reformation and the episodes of iconoclasm that it initiated forced artists—even staunchly Catholic artists—into a defensive posture regarding the status of devotional images. Artists became increasingly aware of the limits of devotional pictures and the inadequacy of their own artistic creations when compared to the grace-giving, miracle-working images of previous generations. On this account, a rift opens between medieval devotional pictures which ‘worked’ and early modern devotional pictures, which insist on their own inadequacy as conduits of divine grace.39 In a recent book on Titian, I have attempted to offer a different account of Renaissance devotional pictures. 40 While scholars have long recognized that Titian produced a number of small-format paintings of biblical subjects, these are often believed to have served as conduits of secular messages. Scholars often refer to a painting like Titian’s so-called Salome as being a ‘secular’ painting or a ‘profane’ iteration of a biblical subject matter without fully metabolizing the implications of such a contradictory claim for an early modern object, when categorical distinctions between sacred and profane 37 Aikema 1994: 51–2. 38 On the changing definitions of the High Renaissance, see Burke 2012. 39 Belting 1994: 409–90; Koerner 2004; Nagel and Wood 2010. For an insightful discussion of the consequences this had for art history as a discipline, see Squire 2009: 15–89. 40 Nygren 2020: 18–21.

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did not exist.41 As I have shown, despite the air of seduction communicated by the protagonist’s cascading garments, nevertheless this painting served a spiritual and disciplinary function by activating a particular form of graphic exegesis. 42 The presentation of a voluptuous female body was not inimical to devotion in the early modern world. However, this forces the question: is Titian’s Magdalene different in kind from the so-called Salome, or do the two paintings rather manifest a difference in degree? I do not believe that the sensual presentation of Mary Magdalene as a nude figure cloaked only in her hair necessarily shifts the painting out of the register of devotional images. It is commonly recognized that the sixteenth century was a period of increasingly defined genres; this is evidently true in the realm of literature, as is demonstrated by the vibrant debates over Aristotle’s Poetics.43 Scholars have generally accepted that something similar was afoot in the realm of the visual arts—that there was an increasingly strong and recognizable distinction between sacred and secular art. If such a thing as genre decorum exists, it raises a fundamental issue with many pictures produced around the middle of the sixteenth century: by one logic, certain pictorial subjects, strategies, or modalities of portraying the human (especially female) body risked abrogating whatever devotional function an overtly religious subject matter might have arrogated to a picture. Such thinking raises a number of fundamental questions: was it possible to have a genuinely devotional image that knowingly exhibits female flesh? Can a painting wilfully and gleefully subvert the rules of decorum and still discharge its function as a devotional image? Do issues like eroticism continue to have salience if we take seriously that the painting was done for a female beholder? Many scholars have decided that Titian’s picture of Mary Magdalene violated the rules of decorum. Charles Hope noted that ‘the religious content is a decidedly minor element in the picture’s appeal’. 44 Now, one response to this is to see the painting as a sort of wry and ironic commentary on the collision of genres, as the devotional picture rubs up against the category of delectable female nudes, which had become the specialty of Venetian painting in the wake of Giorgione. To underline the point, scholars have suggested Titian based his depiction of the voluptuous saint on a readily

41 42 43 44

Newman 2013. Nygren 2014 and 2017. Javitch 1998. Hope 2003: 87.

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recognizable courtesan. 45 However, as Una Roman d’Elia has shown, those texts that scholars have used to underline the ‘cynical eroticism’ of Titian’s Magdalenes can easily be read against the grain to underline that ‘much of sacred and secular poetry and prose of the period rests on the assumption that passionate love can be pure and even spiritual and that bodily beauty reflects inner virtue’. 46 The semiotic flexibility of Titian’s painting, d’Elia suggests, must be understood within the context of emergent notions of literary and pictorial genres and the notions of decorum that they entail. More specifically, Alexander Nagel has attempted to read the painting within a visual culture of the papacy of Clement VII. 47 In Nagel’s account, the period of the Clementine papacy led to a loosening of the strictures that had dominated and constricted devotional painting for centuries as artists like Parmigianino, Rosso Fiorentino and Titian, among others, began pushing the limits of what could reasonably be considered a devotional painting. It is important to observe that both accounts share a commitment to the notion of decorum. Even those arguments that suggest certain pictorial experiments were invested in probing genre boundaries or even overturning them entirely nevertheless are predicated on the existence of general notions of decorum. There is some warrant for thinking that notions of decorum were taking hold in the sixteenth century. After all, responses to this picture and others like it often make the reader think ‘thou dost protest too much’. For example, writing about a later version of the Magdalene, Giorgio Vasari exclaimed that Titian painted: … una figura da mezza coscia in su d’una Santa Maria Madalena scapigliata, cioè con i capelli che le cascano sopra le spalle, intorno alla gola e sopra il petto, mentre ella alzando la testa con gl’occhi fissi al cielo mostra compunzione nel rossore degl’occhi, e nelle lacrime dogliezza de’ peccati; onde muove questa pittura chiunche la guarda estremamente, e, che è più, ancor che sia bellissima non muove a lascivia, ma a comiserazione.48 A figure of S. Mary Magdalene from the middle of the thighs upwards, all dishevelled; that is, with the hair falling over the shoulders, about the throat, and over the breast, the while that, raising the head with the eyes 45 46 47 48

Goffen 1997: 185 and Ingenhoff-Danhäuser 1984: 52–79. D’Elia 2005: 84–85. Nagel 2005. Vasari 1906: VII.454. For translation, see Vasari 1996: II.795.

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fixed on Heaven, she reveals remorse in the redness of the eyes, and in her tears repentance for her sins. Wherefore the picture moves mightily all who behold it; and, what is more, although she is very beautiful, it moves not to lust but to compassion.

Notice that the translator has chosen to render the word ‘com[m]iserazione’ as ‘compassion’. This is an interesting choice and one that might seem philologically dubious, since ‘commiseration’ and ‘compassion’ have distinct connotations and denotations in English. However, when one presses on the etymology and usage of ‘commiserazione’ in early modern Italian it quickly becomes clear that the two terms were actually quite interchangeable. The only def inition given for ‘commiserazione’ in early editions of the dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca is ‘misericordia’; the minute one flips pages to examine what exactly constitutes ‘misericordia’, one finds ‘compassione’. 49 So, although compassion is perhaps not the best modern rendering of the Italian, it has a certain logic and philological justification. Indeed, one prominent early modern Italian-to-English dictionary renders ‘comiserazione’ precisely as ‘compassion’ or ‘pitty’.50 Moreover, the use of the word compassion brings us back to the discussion above; devotional pictures are often defined as images that incite compassion. But the question is, what sort of ‘compassion’—suffering with—does a painting like Titian’s Magdalene possibly elicit? Is Vasari being sincere, or is he simply giving cover to a picture whose focus is anything but commiseration? Was he being evasive because he knew that this picture consciously flouted the strict decorum of the genre of devotional painting? There is some evidence to suggest that Titian himself at least understood the subversive character of his Magdalenes. Around 1561, Baccio Valori visited Titian in his studio in Venice, and there they discussed a painting of the Magdalene, likely the version that is today in the Hermitage (Fig. 9.7). Valori writes: Conobbe qui Tiziano, quasi fermo in casa per l’età, e come che fusse stimato per ritrarre al naturale, mi mostrò una Maddalena nel deserto, da piacere. Anzi mi ricordo hora che dicendoli che era da piaser troppo, come fresca e rugiadosa in quella penitenza, conosciuto che io volea dire che 49 Vocabolario 1612: 533, s.v. ‘Misericordia’. The Crusca def ines the word as: ‘Affetto, che si muove nell’animo nostro ad aver compassione d’altrui nelle sue miserie’ (An affect that moves our minds to have compassion for others in their suffering). 50 Florio 1611, s.v. ‘Commiseratione’.

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Fig. 9.7. Titian, Penitent Magdalene, c. 1565, oil on canvas. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

dovessi essere scarna dal digiuno, mi rispose ghigniando:—Avvertisce che s’è riratta pel primo dì che vi entrò, inanzi che cominciasse a digiunare—; ma per certo per rappresentar in la pittura penitente sì, ma piacevole quanto poteva, e per certo era tale.51 There I met Titian, who was almost confined to his house because of old age, and because he was admired for painting things naturally, he showed 51 Transcribed by Kovesi and Polizzotti 2007: 163–4. For a slightly different translation from an earlier transcription, see D’Elia 2005: 103.

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me a Magdalene in the wilderness, very pleasing. In fact, I remember now telling him that she was too pleasant, too fresh and dewy in her penance. He understood that I meant that she should be thin from fasting and responded, grinning: ‘Take note that this is a portrait of her on the first day she entered [the wilderness], before she began to fast’. Most certainly she was represented in that picture as a penitent, yes, but also as pleasing as she could be, and it certainly was that.

This wry sense of humour suggests that Titian was at least aware that his paintings of the voluptuous female saint were open to a variety of interpretations: while one could easily draw from this picture a message of penance and compassion as Vasari had suggested, Valori’s quip and Titian’s witty riposte suggest that there are other ways to read this painting, which focus more on the fleshy female figure than compassion, commiseration, or misericordia. In the case of such an ambiguous image, the internal disposition of the beholder seems to be the ultimate arbiter of the painting’s ‘meaning’, to the extent it can be thought of as a unitary and reified thing. While the Pitti painting is certainly lachrymose, these tears do not necessarily gloss as the result of penance or commiseration; rather, they seem the result of the sort of spiritual ecstasy that would have been easily legible by Colonna or any devotionally inclined beholder.52

Embodied devotion In the case of the painting given to Vittoria Colonna, we know a great deal about the beholder’s internal disposition: she was a deeply spiritual woman who was committed to authentically living a Christian life, also with an ambitious understanding of ecclesiastical reform. She also had great taste in art.53 Alexander Nagel, Una Roman d’Elia, and Jessica Maratsos have presented exemplary studies of the intimate exchange of letters and poems between Michelangelo and Colonna—in this exchange gift-giving, artistic technique, and the reworking of pictorial types all take on theological valences.54 Christian Kleinbub and Lisa Rafanelli have written about Colonna’s commission to Michelangelo of a painting of the Noli me tangere (discussed

52 Nagel 2005: 391. 53 Targoff 2018: 176–207. 54 Nagel 1997; d’Elia 2006; and Maratsos 2017.

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in Dennis Geronimus’s chapter in the present volume).55 It is clear that her deep identification with the female spirituality of Mary Magdalene informed her appreciation of that work. Starting in the late 1530s, Michelangelo and Colonna developed an intense friendship that resulted in some of Michelangelo’s most personal works of art and the most sophisticated art criticism of the first half of the sixteenth century. However, as Ramie Targoff points out, when Michelangelo received the commission for the Noli me tangere in 1531, he knew little about the Marchesa.56 In the years that followed, Michelangelo learned to produce personalized works for Colonna that registered with the picture’s first beholder by emphasizing the grace and redemption purchased through Christ’s suffering and the Virgin’s participation in that event. Yet the alignment between Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere and Colonna’s spirituality was not guaranteed. In producing their pictures of the Magdalene for Colonna, both Titian and Michelangelo produced pictorial Briefs in the epistolary mode, works of art that were addressed to a distant recipient about whom little (perhaps nothing) was known. How did this happen? Did they need to know the specific identity of the beholder in order to respond the Charge? Or could their pictorial Briefs simply respond to the obvious fact that Mary Magdalene embodies a particular kind of corporeal spirituality, a fact for which any painting of the saint must account? Jeffrey Hamburger fundamentally transformed the history of art when he took seriously the visual devotion of nuns, but as he himself made a point of emphasizing, the art he worked on was ‘ugly’.57 It was something akin to outsider art and its lack of refinement was understood to imbue the works with spiritual and devotional immediacy that substituted for artistry. Hamburger’s ideas have recently undergone serious and forceful revision, especially regarding the character of female devotion in Italy during the Renaissance.58 Giancarla Periti’s excellent study of the elite convent of San Paolo in Parma in the early sixteenth century offers insight into the visual culture of women who were quite similar to Colonna in power, wealth, and prestige. The most revolutionary aspect of Periti’s analysis is her attentive study of the kinaesthetic and erotic logic embedded in the nuns’ everyday interaction with art. This is particularly present in her reading of the convent’s tin-glazed maiolica floors (Fig. 9.8). While many of the 55 56 57 58

Kleinbub 2013 and Rafanelli 2012. Targoff 2018: 185. See also Donati 2019: 68. Hamburger 1998. See the section on religion in Couchman, McIver and Poska (eds.) 2013.

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Fig. 9.8. Anonymous, Floor tile depicting the Cruelty of Love, c. 1470, tin-glazed maiolica. Galleria Nazionale, Parma.

scenes below the feet of the nuns show heads and mottoes about fidelity, a surprising number of these tiles present an iconography of erotic love—of Petrarchan love. Now, this hardly seems appropriate for women supposedly vowed to chastity. However, Periti observes that for elite women in convents virginity was ‘viewed not only as a state of bodily purity through abstention from the sexual act, but also as an immaculate spiritual status that must be preserved by restraining one’s inquisitive eyes and controlling the body’.59 Therefore images could help inculcate this virtue. The images derived from the poetic tradition of courtly love were focused not so much on physical intimacy or sexual relations, but rather on an idealized force to be gained through an individual’s special merits. By presenting the nuns’ downcast 59 Periti 2016: 18.

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eye with representations of this idealized transformational power, the physical apparatus of the convent came to inculcate a form of chastity that was focused on mental discipline rather than simply corporeal renunciation, which was presumably satisfied by the nuns’ vows. The women represented under foot might have served as negative exemplars, as reminders of an outside world the nuns had left behind, or as imaginative proxies. As Periti notes: ‘By proposing secular scenes and games on the floor decorations of the convent, the tiles engaged a community in multiple and unanticipated ways, treading with positive, negative, or mixed feelings on the tiles whose representations were easily able to intrude on the lived space of the room itself’.60 These ornate maiolica floors consciously activated notions of female spirituality predicated on supposedly feminine virtues like passivity, humility, deprivation and obedience by engaging not only the eyes but also the body as ‘spectators traversed and viewed back and forth in a circuit of endless beginnings and endings’.61 Similarly, Titian’s Pitti Magdalene presents a powerful female saint in full possession of her body, instrumentalizing her body to gain divine knowledge. Pace Vasari, this picture is not about penance and rejection of mortal flesh. Rather, the painting is about conversion, which doesn’t necessarily mean moving from sin to grace, though that is one definition. It can also mean a reorientation, or movement towards.62 Mary Magdalene now moves toward Christ, and because she lived through her body, so shall she also worship through her body. In an epistolary pictorial Brief sent with little knowledge of its recipient, Titian somehow captured that particular female charism better than any painter had before. As Nirit Ben Aryeh Debby notes: ‘Although modern viewers who bring little or no inner sense of spiritual devotion to their encounter with Titian’s Pitti Magdalene are puzzled by its sensual beauty, Colonna was not. The Magdalene’s physical beauty was interpreted by the poet as a sign of spiritual strength and purity. Moreover, contemplation of the painting led the poet to self-recognition and to some profound conclusions about the strength and importance of female spirituality’.63 Colonna’s responses to Michelangelo’s presentation drawings (which are reproduced in Jessica Maratsos’s chapter in the present volume) reveal that Colonna was capable of glossing art works on several levels that fall between identification, imitation, contrition and everything in between. There is literary evidence to suggest that she glossed 60 61 62 63

Periti 2016: 53. Periti 2016: 71. Nock 1961: 7. Debby 2003: 32.

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Titian’s painting in a similarly multivalent fashion. She composed a poem in praise of the exemplary comportment of Mary Magdalene’s contrition, which may well have been written in response to Titian’s picture. I cite it in full: Donna accesa animosa, e da l’errante vulgo lontana, in soletario albergo parmi lieta veder, lasciando a tergo quanto non piace al vero eterno Amante, e, fermato il desio, fermar le piante sovra un gran monte; ond’io mi specchio e tergo nel bello exempio, e l’alma drizzo ed ergo dietro l’orme beate e l’opre sante. L’alta spelonca sua questo alto scoglio mi rassembra, e ’l gran sol il suo gran foco ch’ogni animo gentil anco riscalda; in tal pensier da vil nodo mi scioglio, pregando lei con voce ardita e balda m’impetri dal Signor appo sé loco.64 Dauntless ardent lady, remote from the errant masses, I see you happily going to your solitary abode, leaving far behind you all that does not please your true eternal Lover, until, on a great mountain, where your desire at last fixes, there you fix your feet. I mirror myself and polish myself in your lovely example, turning my soul after your blessed footsteps and lifting it to your holy deeds. Her lofty cave I compare to this high rock, and this great sun to that great fire of hers that still warms every noble soul. In such thoughts, I escape the base knots that entangle me, and I pray to her with a bold, fearless voice that she seek me a place beside her at the side of the Lord.

Regardless of whether this was written in response to Titian’s painting, the poet reveals that the erotic language of Petrarch’s poetics certainly not did not nullify the devotional function of a spiritual exemplar.65 One can easily imagine that the spiritual notion of leaving behind the ‘vil nodo’ of earthly chains—a sort of remaking of the Petrarchan corpus carcere—might find its pictorial analogy in female nudity covered by flowing locks that seem inexorably to wrap about other trusses, her breasts and her fingers. 64 S1: 121, following the numbering in Colonna 1982; translation in Cox (ed.) 2013: 202. 65 See also Wood 2001: 199–201.

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Colonna composed other verses in honour of the Magdalene and from these poems we clearly gather that for Colonna the spiritual and the erotic were not mutually exclusive.66 On the contrary, Magdalene’s carnal faculties seem to give her even greater understanding, faith, compassion, and the capacity for conversion than had any of Christ’s male apostles. Ramie Targoff has recently drawn attention to how Colonna used the purported susceptibility of the female body to excessive erotic attachments to her own advantage. For instance, in 1543 Alvise Priuli wrote a chastising missive to Colonna insinuating that she desired to enter into a physical relationship with Reginald Pole. She inoculated herself against that charge by doubling down on the spiritual access Christ granted her through her bodily sensations: As concerns my too famous flesh, that you all speak about, that is, that I have too much affection for such a spirit of God [Pole], which according to you can be a temptation … in writing about this to others, [our venerable monsignor] has made me understand that it is not an error, for if it were error and temptation, his compassion would never have permitted him to declare it a sign of good.67

While human bodies may feel attraction, the purity of her faith prevents erotic attachments from taking over. For Colonna, the female body could serve as a medium and mode of knowing and expressing love for the divine. Here I find it interesting to note that it is precisely what distinguishes the Pitti Magdalene from all of the other versions painted by Titian, that is to say her nudity (the source and cause of such befuddlement among modern critics), which to me suggests that this painting was, if not explicitly made with Colonna in mind, then oddly and serendipitously coincident with one of the driving charisms of her spiritual disposition. Moreover, as Alexander Nagel has observed, the tears of the Pitti Magdalene do not communicate ‘the penitential striving of the sinner’, but rather suggest to the beholder that this woman is ‘the grace-filled recipient of divine love’.68 This is quite a different approach from what Michelangelo produced in his later presentation drawings, which focused on Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and Mary’s suffering. Michelangelo had an incredibly sensitive understanding of Colonna’s spirituality and developed works of art that 66 For these poems, see Colonna 1982: S1: 155, S2: 25, S1: 121, S2: 26, S2: 36. See also Russell 1992. 67 Targoff 2018: 246. For the original text (Letter CLXIII), see above, p. 62. 68 Nagel 2005: 391.

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fed on and flowed into that spiritual economy. Titian, by contrast, seems to have projected into the mind and spirit of a woman he did not know and found another, equally valid aspect of her spiritual practice—the bliss of divine ecstasy. Produced as a pictorial Brief in the epistolary mode, Titian’s Pitti Magdalene was an unforeseen response to a difficult Charge laid out by a trusted patron. In anticipating that the painting’s beholder might also recognize the female body as a conduit of spiritual awakening, Titian produced a painting that appears to modern eyes to challenge the genre of devotional images, but which in reality reveals to us a great deal about how pre-modern devotion took on gendered tones through the activation and re-presentation of the female body.

Bibliography Primary works Colonna, V. (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. Florio, John (1611) Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues. London. Vasari, G. (1906) Le opere, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols. Florence. ––– (1996) Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, tr. G. Du C. De Vere, with an introduction and notes by D. Ekserdjian, 2 vols. New York. Vocabolario (1612) Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca. Venice.

Secondary works Agosti, B. (2005) ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano e Michelangelo)’, in Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. P. Ragionieri. Florence: 71–93. Aikema, B. (1994) ‘Titian’s Mary Magdalen in the Palazzo Pitti: an ambiguous painting and its critics’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57: 48-59. Aikema, B. and G. Tagliaferro (2009) Le botteghe di Tiziano. Florence. Baxandall, M. (1985) Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures. New Haven. Belting, H. (1994) Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, tr. E. Jephcott. Chicago. Binotto, M. (2013) ‘Maddalena’, in Tiziano (exhibition catalogue), ed. G. C. Villa. Milan. Brisman, S. (2017) Albrecht Dürer and the Epistolary Mode of Address. Chicago.

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Brundin, A., D. Howard and M. Laven (2018) The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy. Oxford. Burke, J. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Rethinking the High Renaissance: The Culture of the Visual Arts in Early Sixteenth-century Rome, ed. J. Burke. Burlington, VT: 1–23. Couchman, J., K. A. McIver and A. M. Poska (eds.) (2013) The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Farnham. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. D’Elia, U. R. (2005) The Poetics of Titian’s Religious Paintings. Cambridge. ––– (2006) ‘Drawing Christ’s blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform’, Renaissance Quarterly 59: 90–129. Debby, N. B. A. (2003) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Titian’s Pitti “Magdalen”’, Woman’s Art Journal 24: 29–33. Donati, A. (2019) Vittoria Colonna e l’eredità degli spirituali. Rome. Engel, S. (2012) Das Lieblingsbild der Venezianer: Christus und die Ehebrecherin in Kircher, Kunst, und Staat des 16. Jahrhunderts. Berlin. Galandra Cooper, I. (2016) The Materiality of Domestic Devotion in Sixteenth-Century Naples. PhD dissertation: Cambridge University. Goffen, R. (1997) Titian’s Women. New Haven. Hamburger, J. F. (2008) The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York. Hope, C. (2003) Titian. London. Ingenhoff-Danhäuser, M. (1984) Maria Magdalena. Heilige und Sünderin in der italienischen Renaissance. Studien zur Ikonographie der Heiligen von Leonardo bis Tizian. Tübingen. Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) US Reports 378: 184–204. Javitch, Daniel (1998) ‘The emergence of poetic genre theory in the sixteenth century’, Modern Language Quarterly 59: 139–69. Kleinbub, C. (2013) ‘To sow the heart: touch, spiritual anatomy, and image theory in Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere’, Renaissance Quarterly 66/1: 81–129. Knopp, I. (2011) ‘United States v Stevens: gnawing away at freedom of speech or paving the way for animal rights?’, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 24: 331–49. Koerner, J. L. (2004) The Reformation of the Image. Chicago. Kovesi, C. and L. Polizzotti (2007) Memorie di Casa Valori. Florence. Loh, M. (2007) Titian Remade: Repetition and The Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art. Los Angeles. Maratsos, J. (2017) ‘Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the afterlife of intimacy’, The Art Bulletin 99: 69–101. Nagel, A. (1997) ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, The Art Bulletin 79: 647–68.

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––– (2005) ‘Experiments in art and reform in Italy in the early sixteenth century’, in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. K. Gouwens and S. E. Reiss. Burlington: 385–409. Nagel, A. and Wood, C. S. (2010) Anachronic Renaissance. New York. Newman, B. (2013) Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred. South Bend, IN. Nock, A. D. (1961) Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo. Oxford. Nygren, C. J. (2014) ‘Stylizing eros: narrative ambiguity and the discourse of desire in Titian’s so-called Salome’, in Renaissance Love: Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian Art around 1500, ed. J. Kohl, M. Koos and A. Randolph. Berlin: 23–44. ––– (2017) ‘Graphic exegesis: reflections on the difficulty of talking about biblical images, pictures, and texts’, in The Art of Visual Exegesis: Rhetoric, Texts, Images (Emory Studies in Early Christianity), ed. R. R. Jeal, W. S. Melion and V. K. Robbins. Atlanta: 271–302. ––– (2020). Titian’s Icons: Tradition, Charisma, and Devotion in Renaissance Italy. University Park, PA. Och, M. (2001) ‘Vittoria Colonna and the commission for a Mary Magdalene by Titian’, in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss. Kirksville, MS: 193–223. Panofsky, E. (1927) ‘Imago pietatis. Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des “Schmerzenmanns” und der “Maria Mediatrix”’ in Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer. Leipzig: 261–308. Periti, G. (2016) In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision, and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents. New Haven. Rafanelli, L. M. (2012) ‘Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere for Vittoria Colonna, and the changing status of women in Renaissance Italy’, in Mary Magdalene: Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, ed. M. A. Erhardt and A. M. Morris. Leiden: 223–48. Rearick, W. R. (2001) ‘Le “Maddalene penitenti” di Tiziano’, Arte Veneta 58: 22–41. Russell, R. (1992) ‘The mind’s pursuit of the divine. A survey of secular and religious themes in Vittoria Colonna’s sonnets’, Forum Italicum, 26/1: 14–27. Sexton Graham, H. (2008) ‘Renaissance flesh and woman’s devotion: Titian’s Penitent Magdalen’, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39: 137–54. Squire, M. (2009) Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Cambridge. Switzer, S. E. (2012) Correggio and the Sacred Image. PhD dissertation, Columbia University. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Tietze, H. (1950) Titian: The Paintings and Drawings, with Three Hundred Illustrations. London.

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United States v. Stevens (2010) US Reports 559: 1–28. Von Rosen, V. (2001) Mimesis und Selbstbezüglichkeit in Werken Tizians: Studien zum venezianischen Malereidiskurs. Emsdetten. Von Simpson, O. (1953) ‘Compassio and co-redemptio in Roger van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross’, The Art Bulletin 35/1: 9–16. Wethey, H. E. (1969–75) The Paintings of Titian, 3 vols. London. Wood, J. M. (2001) ‘Vittoria Colonna’s Mary Magdalen’, in Visions of Holiness: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Italy, ed. A. Ladis and S. E. Zuraw. Athens, GA: 195–212.

About the author Christopher J. Nygren is Associate Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the University of Pittsburgh. His book, Titian’s Icons: Charisma, Tradition, and Devotion in the Italian Renaissance, was published in 2020. His next project is provisionally titled Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art.

10. ‘A More Loving and Constant Heart’: Vittoria Colonna, Alfonso d’Avalos, Michelangelo and the Complicated History of Pontormo’s Noli me tangere* Dennis Geronimus Abstract Designed by Michelangelo, painted by Pontormo, and reproduced by other masters, the Noli me tangere (c. 1531–32) and its subsequent copies were the product of a chain of mediations on the part of painters, patrons and their proxies. The original recipient of the intensely dramatic composition, commissioned through an intermediary, was Vittoria Colonna. At the heart of this study is a discussion of the emotionally engaging—and profoundly unorthodox—ways in which Michelangelo and Pontormo envisage the tension of the moment of witness between the risen Christ and the Magdalene. The chapter also examines Colonna’s own spiritual and poetic relationship with the figure of Mary Magdalene, and that of other women in her circle. Keywords: Colonna, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Mary Magdalene, Noli me tangere, cartoon/cartone, patronage

Entwined destinies The following story is of no ordinary artistic commission. It may best be described as a chain reaction, set in motion by an exceptional woman and involving a large cast of characters. A number of contributions to the present volume eloquently frame Vittoria Colonna as progenitor and exemplar, at *

I am grateful to Virginia Cox for her comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch10

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Fig. 10.1. Rime spirituali, MS containing 103 of her religious sonnets, gifted by Colonna to Michelangelo in 1540–41. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 11539.

once spiritual and literary. In this essay, I would like to introduce a devotional model of her own: Colonna’s most inspiring source of emulation (matched only by Catherine of Alexandria and the Virgin Mary herself)—Mary Magdalene. The story also features a cohort of male protagonists of crossed destinies: patrons, painters and a string of intermediaries, brokers and agents facilitating the commission; their various relationships to the Marchioness of Pescara, direct or indirect, serving as the ligatures that bind them. United in partnership within this group is another pairing: that of Michelangelo and Jacopo da Pontormo, two artists joined in collaboration twice within a year, at one point even working under one roof. Along the way, I hope we might rediscover a new complexity and nuance in commonly used terms like ‘patronage’ and ‘authorship’, as the role of mediators in the first case and copies in the second are key to understanding artistic production and notions of value in this period. Vittoria Colonna was recognized in her lifetime as a poetic innovator, a catalyst of Catholic reform and as a paragon of piety (Fig. 10.1). Of special poignancy to the discussion that follows is her widowhood, as her time of loss, longing and need of consolation coincided with her deepening identification with the Magdalene, who demonstrated ultimate perseverance and fidelity to Christ during the time of his Passion. Among Colonna’s religious lyrics,

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or rime spirituali, two most directly invoke the Magdalene, in one of which Colonna describes the Magdalene’s visit to Christ’s tomb while his male disciples are in hiding: La bella donna, a cui dolente preme quel gran desio che sgombra ogni paura, di notte, sola, inerme, umile e pura, armata sol di viva ardente speme, entra dentro ’l sepolcro, e piange e geme; gli angeli lascia e più di sé non cura, ma a’ piedi del Signor cade sicura, ché ’l cor, ch’arde d’amor, di nulla teme. Ed agli uomini, eletti a grazie tante, forti, insieme richiusi, il Lume vero per timor parve nudo spirto ed ombra; onde, se ’l ver dal falso non s’adombra, convien dar a le donne il preggio intero d’aver il cor più acceso e più constante.1 Seized in her sadness by that great desire which banishes all fear, this beautiful woman, all alone, by night, helpless, humble, pure, and armed only with a living, burning hope, entered the sepulchre and wept and lamented; ignoring the angels, caring nothing for herself, she fell at the feet of the Lord, secure, for her heart, aflame with love, feared nothing. And the men, chosen to share so many graces, though strong, were shut up together in fear; the true Light seemed to them only a shadow. If, then, the true is not a friend to the false, we must give to women all due recognition for having a more loving and more constant heart.

There are other allusions to the Magdalene in Colonna’s writings, testifying to the special fondness that the poet espoused for the woman of the Gospels, inspiring a dialogue springing, at least in part, from lived experience. The most prominent occur in her sonnet ‘Donna accesa animosa’ (Dauntless ardent lady); 1

Colonna 1982: 162 (S1: 155); translation Gibaldi 1987: 42.

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in a moving letter to Costanza d’Avalos Piccolomini, Duchess of Amalfi; and in Colonna’s terza rima vision poem ‘Il trionfo di Christo’, where the poet sees the Magdalene, along with Christ and the Virgin, in a Dantean-Petrarchan celestial ‘triumph’.2 Betrothed at the age of four to the condottiere Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos, born to a noble Neapolitan family of Castilian origins and the Marquis of Pescara, Colonna married him at seventeen. The couple shared only about one year together before d’Avalos left Naples for northern Italy to join Vittoria’s father in fighting for Spain and the papal forces against the French. Turning to her pen for solace, in 1512 she composed her earliest securely datable epistle, a passionate lament in verse addressed to her husband while both he and her father were captured, imprisoned (and later freed) after the disastrous Battle of Ravenna.3 In 1525, now sixteen years since the couple’s marriage, each marked by absence, the French were finally defeated at the battle of Pavia. D’Avalos was never to return home, however. Having sustained fatal injuries defending the imperial forces, he perished in Milan on 2 December 1525. While her husband was away at war, Colonna spent most of her time at her home in Naples and the isle of Ischia, where, though herself childless, she raised her husband’s young cousin Alfonso d’Avalos (along with his sister Costanza, later duchess of Amalfi, recipient of the letter alluded to above, invoking the Magdalene at the feet of Christ). Upon her bereavement, Colonna made her home in Rome around 1534, living in a series of convents but continuing to travel.4 It was probably around 1535, soon after Michelangelo’s own permanent relocation to Rome (the year before) that Colonna’s friendship 2 For the sonnet, see Colonna 1982: 145 (S1: 121); Cox (ed.) 2013: 202; for the letter to Costanza d’Avalos, dating pre-1545, see Colonna 1892: 299–302 (letter CLXX, undated). For the ‘Trionfo’, see Colonna 1982 (S2: 36). The passage describing the Magdalene is at lines 123–41. The ‘Trionfo’ was probably penned in 1532 and thus it corresponds chronologically to the completion of Pontormo’s Noli me tangere after Michelangelo’s design. Pre-dating most of her rime spirituali, this little-studied capitolo was not included in the most authoritative print collection of Colonna’s verses, by Valgrisi (Colonna 1546). 3 See the parallel-text edition in Cox (ed.) 2013: 77–82. At one point, Colonna alludes to devotional images as a source of solace in her time of anguish: ‘There was no temple that was not soaked in my tears, no image that had not had some of my vows. Perhaps they were displeased by so much anxious care, so many tears, so many vows; for love without measure is displeasing to God’ (lines 16–21). 4 This is especially true for the last decade of the Marchesa’s life. Colonna travelled to Ferrara in 1537, where she was hosted by the reformer Renée of France and her husband Ercole II d’Este; visited Bologna and then Pisa in 1538 to hear the sermons of Bernardino Ochino on Franciscan humility, before proceeding on to Lucca; fled to Orvieto in 1541 during the Salt Wars; and retired to Viterbo in the same year, where she lived until summer 1544 in the convent of Santa Caterina. As discussed later in the present essay, Colonna contemplated a pilgrimage to the shrine of Mary Magdalene in the Sainte-Baume, Provence, in 1537. She even sought to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on her own, another journey she considered but never made.

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with the sculptor, seventeen years her senior, first began.5 The first contact between them, made through an intermediary, was to be followed by their actual face-to-face meeting three years later, in 1538. Their friendship grew through numerous visits, poems and letters (of which seven survive, five from Colonna). These exchanges importantly also included the presentation of three drawings, images of both artistic and divine grace, the Pietà and Crucifixion of c. 1538–40 being the best known (see Fig. 8.1).6

A familiar legend reimagined What follows engages with a specific narrative transformed through Michelangelo’s own poetic impulse and featuring the Magdalene: that of the Noli me tangere, the subject of numerous medieval and Renaissance images, which corresponds to Christ’s indelible words spoken to the Magdalene, ‘touch me not’. The representation of greatest interest to us is presently in a private collection located in the town of Busto Arsizio in the province of Varese (just northwest of Milan)‚ to be discussed alongside a faithful copy in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence (Figs. 10.2 and 10.3).7 According to the Gospel 5 The spiritual friendship between Colonna and Michelangelo is the subject of Nagel 1997: 647–68 (taking as its main point of departure Michelangelo’s black chalk Pietà); and 2000: 143–7; Ragionieri (ed.) 2005; and, more specifically, Bianco and Romani 2005 and Targoff 2018: 176–207. Prodan 2014: 187n1 provides a more expansive list of sources, in the context of Michelangelo’s connections to the circle of Egidio and the spirituali (reform-minded Catholic intellectuals). For Colonna’s canzoniere spirituale for Michelangelo and the drawings that he gifted to the pious Marchesa in return, see Brundin 2008: 67–100; and, on Michelangelo’s art works for Colonna more broadly, Forcellino 2016: 270–313. Still more recently, the implications of Michelangelo’s work for Colonna are at the heart of Donati 2019. 6 Both sheets are discussed in the catalogue accompanying the revelatory recent exhibition of Michelangelo drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Bambach 2017: 194–9, pl. 170 and fig. 73. 7 A selected recent bibliography of the Michelangelo-Pontormo commission includes: Wallace 1988; Costamagna 1994: 215–17, nos. 69–69b; Hirst and Mayr 1997: 335–44, with accompanying entries (344–8); Suthor 2003, especially 263–7; Hirst 2004, an expanded version of his 1997 text, extending to Michelangelo’s later cartoni; Ragionieri (ed.) 2005: 86–8, cat. no. 21 (entry by Vittoria Romani); Agosti (ed.) 2007: 240–5 (entry by Marcella Marongiu); and Rafanelli 2012: 223–48. To this list, I would add Edelstein 2021, a text for a collected volume currently in preparation. For Bronzino’s panel in the Casa Buonarroti (first mentioned in 1666, when it was transferred from the collection of Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici to the grand ducal collections, see especially Acidini, Capretti and Risaliti (eds.) 2014: 332, cat. no. VII.16 (entry by Elena Capretti, with brief bibliography). Representations of the Magdalene across the centuries and in a variety of media were the subject of a recent three-venue travelling exhibition in Brou, Carcassonne and Douai, France, titled Marie Madeleine, la Passion révélée (2016–17); see Botte, Briat-Philippe and Maynard (eds.) 2016: 130–43 for Noli me tangere scenes in the accompanying catalogue.

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Fig. 10.2. Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Noli me tangere, 1531–32, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy.

of John (20:11–18), Mary weeps beside Christ’s empty tomb following the Resurrection. When the risen Christ appears at daybreak on Easter morn, the Magdalene f irst mistakes him for a gardener, who, she hopes, may have knowledge of the whereabouts of Christ’s body. Arguably no one can rival Lavinia Fontana, who, in her conception of the story in 1581, disguises Christ as an altogether convincing contemporary gardener–complete with

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Fig. 10.3. Agnolo Bronzino (attrib. to) (copy after Michelangelo-Pontormo), Noli me tangere, post-1532, oil on panel, 172 × 134 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence.

wide-brimmed straw hat (Fig. 10.4). Soon, however, the despondent Magdalene recognizes the figure as Christ himself and makes an impassioned attempt to embrace him. What follows, as represented famously by Fra Angelico, in his convent fresco in San Marco begun around 1438, is an engaging, almost dance-like drama of contrary forces and gestures: those

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Fig. 10.4. Lavinia Fontana, Noli me tangere, 1581, oil on canvas, 80 × 65.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

of advance and retreat, of unbridled joy and reticence, of touch sought and poignantly withheld.8 Ultimately, Christ arrests and deflects Mary’s 8 Themes of corporeality and tactility, in relation to the act of intimate beholding, are addressed in Randolph 2014 (Noli me tangere is, in fact, the title of the Introduction). See also Quiviger 2014: 169–202; and, in the Augustinian context with regard to Andrea del Sarto’s early Noli me tangere, Cody 2018: 37–68. Stimulating my thinking in new ways on the subject of embodiment, as it relates to the Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ, is Baert 2011: 11–34. The ambiguous relationship between sight and touch—and faith—is played out in fascinating ways in the open/inner state of the Passion altar from Cloister Ihlow, a Flemish work from Antwerp, dating c. 1510–15 and now housed in Saint Lambert Church in Aurich. There, above and flanking the

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Fig. 10.5. Fra Angelico, Noli me tangere, c. 1438–40, fresco. Cell 1, Convent of San Marco, Florence.

movement toward him, instructing her not to touch him as he has not yet ascended to heaven. In musical terms, one can even trace a contrapuntal quality to the figures’ action. The unorthodox, intensely personal nature of Michelangelo’s narrative solution grows all the more astonishing when seen in relation to the visual carved scene of the Crucifixion are a pair of painted panels showing the Ecce Homo (inviting the visual act of witness) and the Noli me tangere (warning against touch). This fascinating polyptych is elucidated in Walker Bynum 2011: 66–69, f igs. 13–14, drawing attention to the object’s visionary experience and call for sensory participation, in all of its complex mediations.

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Fig. 10.6. Spanish, Plaque with the Journey to Emmaus and the Noli me tangere, c. 1115–20, ivory, overall: 27 × 13.4 × 1.9 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

precedents (Fig. 10.5). How urgent, insistent—and empowered—Michelangelo’s own re-imagined Magdalene appears! Here, we might be reminded of Giovanni Colombini (d. c. 1367), the founder of the Gesuati in Siena, and his description of her emotionally turbulent state: ‘She went searching for her beloved spouse as if drunk and half mad’.9 Before drawing a parallel with the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Ceiling, meanwhile, Charles De Tolnay memorably wrote: ‘Magically attracted, the Magdalene approaches the vision of Christ with the uncertain steps of a somnambulist’.10 (There is indeed almost something of Henri Fuseli to her staggering movements.) 9 Ludwig Jansen 2000: 261. 10 De Tolnay 1970: 110.

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The scene pulsates with energy. Michelangelo’s figure of the Magdalene seems to tremble forward as she steps, ardently, beseechingly, toward the retreating Christ, the outlines of her form revealing a number of pentimenti, or revisions made in the process of painting, as especially seen in the dark green sleeves of her dress (gamurra) and the lower section of her orange over-dress. More remarkable still, the Magdalene no longer kneels. She stands—and strides forward, arrested in dynamic motion. In its audacity, this choice is virtually unprecedented within the long tradition of artistic representations of the Noli me tangere.11 Two notable earlier exceptions do emerge, both hailing from beyond Italian borders and singularly original in their iconography. The f irst is a Spanish ivory plaque with traces of gilding, showing the Journey to Emmaus and Noli me tangere, dating c. 1115–20 and now in New York (Fig. 10.6). The second is Hans Holbein the Younger’s representation of the biblical legend in 1526–8, characterized by Christ’s now-vacated open tomb at right, which glows like a magic lantern, inhabited as it is by two angels who have assumed the place of Christ, his shroud lying between them, suggestive of a presence in its absence. The huddled pair glows incandescent as lightning bugs, with the farther angel looking directly at us with a knowing gaze (Fig. 10.7). Michelangelo conceived his composition in 1531, predating his f irst physical meeting with Colonna by some seven years. It is very likely that Colonna was then still on Ischia. This time also coincides with the period when Colonna composed the majority of her verses of widowhood, between 1526 and the early 1530s. The Florentine master’s vision rivals Colonna’s spiritual poetics in its evocation of ardent love and transcendent sacrality. In fact, if we did not know the (earlier) date of the painting’s production, we might be forgiven for assuming that the Noli me tangere aspired to the spiritual fervency and emotional sincerity of Colonna’s own poetry. Even though recipient and artist had not yet met, it seems clear that the choice of subject represented in the work originated with Colonna herself. Earlier, on March 5 of the same year (1531), Colonna had commissioned another painting testifying to her attachment to the Magdalene. It was then that Colonna appears to have asked Titian‚ with Duke Federico Gonzaga of Mantua and 11 At the same time, Michelangelo is in fact adhering closely to the biblical narrative, which describes the Magdalene standing before the tomb and thus in front of Christ (‘She stood without at the sepulchre, weeping’, King James Version). In the Vulgate, we f ind a potentially more ambivalent reading: ‘Maria autem stabat ad monumentum foris, plorans’, with ‘stabat’ possibly meaning ‘remained’ or ‘was’. That said, the passage proceeds to describe the Magdalene bending down, implying that she indeed was standing. I would like to thank one of the anonymous Press readers for calling attention to the ambiguity hinted in the Vulgate passage.

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Fig. 10.7. Hans Holbein the Younger, Noli me tangere, 1526–28, oil on panel, 76.7 × 95.8 cm. Queen’s Drawing Room, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection Trust.

Alfonso d’Avalos (to whom we shall soon return) acting as go-betweens, to paint for her a Magdalene ‘as pitiful [or ‘lachrymose’] as possible’. Titian completed the painting just over a month later, between March and April—a work that closely resembles the nude Penitent Magdalene of c. 1531–4, now in the Galleria Palatina and discussed by Christopher Nygren in his preceding essay (see Fig. 9.1).12 The circumstances surrounding the genesis of the Michelangelo-designed Noli me tangere, now in Busto Arsizio, and its finest copy in the Casa Buonarroti, are described in some detail by Giorgio Vasari.13 Ultimately, both versions—together with a painting of a pagan subject—were in fact carried 12 In surveying various innovative pictorial responses to the same subject matter, it would be remiss not to mention Titian’s virtuoso youthful work of c. 1514, his Noli me tangere now in the National Gallery, London. X-ray photographs reveal that Christ was originally painted wearing a gardener’s hat and turning away from the Magdalene. The landscape was also drastically altered while the work was in progress. ​See, for example, Agosti 2005. 13 Now inaccessible to scholars, Pontormo’s panel was last shown publicly in the exhibition Maddalena tra sacro e profano in 1986. Exactly three decades earlier, it appeared in Pontormo e il primo manierismo fiorentino, organized by Luciano Berti in the Palazzo Strozzi. The panel

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out not by Michelangelo, but by another hand, that belonging to Jacopo da Pontormo. Nineteen years Michelangelo’s junior, yet thirty-eight at the time, Pontormo was already a very well-established master in his own right. In him, Michelangelo may have seen not only a younger contemporary of prodigious talent but the continuation of his own artistic lineage; according to Vasari, Pontormo’s father, Bartolomeo, was said to have been a disciple of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo’s own master. As Vasari proceeds to recount later in the Life of Pontormo, in a revealing passage worth quoting in full: In the meantime Signor Alfonso Davalos, Marchese del Vasto, having obtained from Michelagnolo Buonarroti by means of Fra Niccolò della Magna a cartoon (cartone) of Christ appearing to the Magdalene in the garden, moved heaven and earth to have it executed for him in painting by Pontormo, Buonarroti having told him that no one could serve him better than that master. Jacopo then executed that work to perfection, and it was accounted a rare painting by reason both of the grandeur of Michelagnolo’s design and of Jacopo’s colouring (per la grandezza del disegno di Michelagnolo e per lo colorito di Iacopo). Whereupon Signor Alessandro Vitelli, who was at that time Captain of the garrison of soldiers in Florence, having seen it, had a picture painted for himself from the same cartoon by Jacopo, which he sent to Città di Castello and caused it to be placed in his own house.14

A partnership begins What follows is a description of a parallel collaboration between the two masters, mirroring the exact same proxy arrangement in which Michelangelo provided his younger partner with a cartoon for execution in a finished oil painting. This time, they were tasked with a profane, distinctly more libidinous subject: a Venus and Cupid, destined for the chamber of the merchant banker Bartolomeo Bettini, where it was to be joined by half-length figures of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, ‘with the intention of having there all the

has been in a private collection in Busto Arsizio since its sale by the Milanese collector Alfredo Costa in 1959. 14 Vasari 1996, II.362; and, in the original, Vasari 1966–87, V.326.

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Fig. 10.8. Jacopo da Pontormo, Venus Kissed by Cupid, 1532–34, oil on panel, 128 × 194 cm. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.

other poets who have sung of love in Tuscan prose and verse’.15 Restored in 2002, the much-copied Venus and Cupid (1532–34) in the Accademia, showing the goddess of love kissing her son while disarming him of his arrows, has regained much of its intended sculptural power (Fig. 10.8).16 Nicolas von Schomberg (or Schönberg)—whom Vasari calls Niccolò della Magna—was appointed Archbishop of Capua (an episcopal see just north of Naples) in 1520 before rising to become governor of Florence under Pope Clement VII. According to Vasari’s account, he was the original link in the Noli me tangere commission’s chain. Yet he strictly played the role of facilitator, having in turn secured the work for Alfonso d’Avalos, first Marchese del Vasto, governor of Milan, and commander general of imperial forces. It was Alfonso, we might recall, who, along with Ferrante Gonzaga, younger brother of the Marquis of Mantua, led a second imperial army that arrived on the north bank of the Arno, completely encircling Florence during the city’s siege in 15 Vasari 1996, II.362; and, in the original, Vasari 1966–87, V.326. 16 For the Venus and Cupid, one large-scale cartone survives in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, difficult to judge due to its poor condition but quite possibly autograph, most notably with regard to the initial sketch. See, most recently, Bambach 2017: 142–6, pl. 121. See, too, Bellucci and Frosinini 2002; and, on specifically the subject of copies after the cartoon, Bellucci and Frosinini 2006.

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late December 1529.17 Born into the illustrious Spanish-Neapolitan d’Avalos family, as mentioned earlier, he was related (by marriage) to Colonna as the younger cousin of her deceased husband, from whom he directly inherited his titles and estates.18 Working on behalf of his widowed relative, it was thus Alfonso who completed the circuitous transaction for the Noli me tangere, finally passing on the finished panel to Vittoria Colonna. We are left to imagine how potentially conflicted Michelangelo—a fiercely republican artist—may have felt in accepting the commission for the Noli me tangere on account of his original client: Schomberg, followed by Alfonso d’Avalos, an enemy general.19 In a letter of 26 December 1531, referring specifically to the now-lost full-scale drawing for the Noli me tangere, Michelangelo’s pupil Antonio Mini relates to the merchant Antonio Gondi that the artist is said ‘not to have provided this work in his own manner’ (my emphasis: ‘non aveva fornito a suo modo quest’opera’), as it was created in a ‘furious rush’ or ‘creative fury’ (in furia) to meet the deadline.20 That is to say, the cartoon was not ‘ben finito’. Taking into account that the cartoon was to be delivered to the commander of an army that had devastated and taken control of his home city, we may assume that Michelangelo must, at the very least, have harboured conflicted feelings. Ultimately, it appears that 17 The commander appears in an imposing armoured portrait by Titian, painted in winter 1533 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles); his likeness was captured two years later in a bronze portrait medal of c. 1535 in Vienna, cast by Giovanni da Cavino, and again by Titian in 1540–1 in the Roman-inspired history painting The Allocution of the Marquis del Vasto to His Troops, now in the Museo del Prado. 18 The d’Avalos family arrived in Italy with the first Spanish kings in the mid-1400s. For the history of the d’Avalos household in Naples and its rise to power in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see the preface to Luise 2006: 27–38. 19 The Venus and Cupid was, by contrast, commissioned by a fellow republican sympathizer, Bettini, although it was eventually purchased by Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, to Michelangelo’s great displeasure. 20 Buonarroti 1965–83: III.340–1. For the self-serving context of Mini’s letter, see Bambach 2017: 167–8. When the twenty-five-year-old Mini left Michelangelo’s employ and struck out on his own in late 1531, Michelangelo promised him numerous drawings and cartoons. Mini proceeded to contact various Italian expatriates and French clients, offering to replicate Michelangelo’s compositions on the basis of his f inished drawings. The latter included the Noli me tangere. Mini’s letter to Gondi, then in Lyon, was written with the aim of retrieving this particular finished drawing, once Pontormo was finished with the painting (‘When I left Florence, it [the cartoon] stayed with Jacopo Pontormo, and [it was agreed] I would ask for it when I believed the said Jacopo had coloured it’). Mini specif ied to Gondi that the cartoon should be ‘rolled up tightly and put in a trunk of cloths, and … not seen by too many people, and is kept secret, because Michelangelo would be displeased, because it is not executed in his manner. He had to make it in a furious rush to make the archbishop happy’ (Bambach 2017: 168, for the present translation).

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the otherwise uncompromising master could not decline the commission, with the new governor of Florence, directly in the service of Pope Clement VII, personally asking for the cartoon’s execution—and with the artist possibly sensing the threat of retaliation that could be visited on him. Few scholars, however, have called attention to the political ramifications of the commission.21 To complicate matters further, Michelangelo’s production of the Noli me tangere cartoon must have come directly on the heels of another fraught commission—that is, in addition to the artist’s already protracted work on the Medici New Sacristy in San Lorenzo. The request in question came from Baccio (Bartolomeo) Valori, leader of the papal and imperial troops, succeeded post-siege in early 1531 by Schomberg, who was to assume control of the new regime as de facto ruler of Florence. Appointed papal commissary by Clement VII, Valori was known for his tyrannical, deeply unpopular rule as interim governor of Florence. Michelangelo’s resulting work was another in the master’s long line of non finiti: the marble David/Apollo in the Bargello, begun soon after the city’s surrender to the Medici in August 1530. Valori had already approached Michelangelo to design a new palace for him in the via Pandolfini, to replace one that had been damaged by the republican government in December 1529. In a letter of June 1531, just over a month after expressing to Sebastiano del Piombo his great pleasure at hearing that Michelangelo was working day and night on the New Sacristy, Clement now voiced his concern that the artist’s superhuman ‘multitasking’ exertions might compromise his health. The pope suggested that he should occasionally go for a walk.22 ‘Una cosa divina’ Michelangelo’s decision to rely on Pontormo, on two separate occasions in close succession, constitutes one of several occasions upon which the master provided drawings for his artistic surrogates to execute as paintings, primarily for reasons of expediency. The earliest known instance was a cartoon intended to be worked up as a Stigmatization of Saint Francis, for an altarpiece carried out by his assistant Piero d’Argenta for San Pietro in 21 One early exception was Charles De Tolnay (1970: 110), who wrote, rather fancifully, while discussing the Medici Chapel in 1970: ‘Was the picture [Noli me tangere] not intended to be a sort of warning that occupied Florence was not to be touched by sinful hands?’ See also Edelstein 2021. 22 For recent biographies of Michelangelo, see Hirst 2011, especially 245–51, and Wallace 2010, especially 154–66, providing overviews of this difficult period of his life—including the Valori commission—and the aftermath of the Siege. For the master’s non finiti, specifically, see Schulz 1975: 366–73; Gilbert 2003: 57–64; and Bambach 2016: 30–41.

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Montorio in Rome, now lost. The same church’s Borgherini Chapel was to house Sebastiano del Piombo’s Flagellation of 1516–24, a mural painting in oil conceived by Michelangelo, as attested by an early idea in red chalk of 1516 now in the British Museum.23 Several other examples followed, with d’Argenta, Sebastiano, Giuliano Bugiardini, Francesco Granacci, Ascanio Condivi, Daniele da Volterra and Marcello Venusti counting among the chief recipients of Michelangelo’s generosity. Such affiliations contradict contemporary allegations of Michelangelo’s indifference to teaching, his arrogance, and even his professional jealousy—charges that, at least in part, spurred Condivi to write his biography of ‘il Divino’ as something of a rhetorical corrective in 1553. The cartoon is one category of drawing that has almost entirely disappeared from Michelangelo’s corpus of works. Only one secure example survives that was made and subsequently used by the master himself: a design for a group of soldiers in the Crucifixion of Saint Peter (c. 1545–50), destined for the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican Palace.24 Although nothing remains of Michelangelo’s original cartone for the Noli me tangere, there survives a fascinating written account of its making. The work is first mentioned in a series of three letters, all dating to 1531, addressed to Michelangelo from his friend Giovanni Battista Figiovanni, Canon of San Lorenzo and overseer of its Fabbrica. In the first letter of 11 April 1531, Figiovanni defines the project’s parameters: the painter had full freedom to elaborate his invention, taking into consideration, however, that the work was destined ‘for a small place’. For several months, Michelangelo appears to have refused to work, but, in Figiovanni’s second, undated letter (of that autumn), he extolls Michelangelo’s cartoon as a ‘cosa divina’. After finishing this functional drawing by October and showing it to Alfonso d’Avalos, Michelangelo received permission (in the third letter from Figiovanni, dating 27 October 1531) to delegate the pictorial execution to Pontormo—and, in an especially fascinating detail, allowed Pontormo the use of his own house to paint the work.25 The latter provision seems to imply that Pontormo worked under Michelangelo’s direct supervision. The material evidence that does survive consists of two rare traces of Michelangelo’s preliminary 23 Chapman 2005: 146–7, 149, cat. no. 32; and, for a broader overview, Wivell (ed.) 2017: 158–71, cat. no. 31. Both discussions also call attention to Michelangelo’s Christ at the Column in black chalk, now in the British Museum, London (cat. nos. 33 and 32, respectively, in the two publications). 24 Michelangelo’s Epifania cartoon of 1550–3, now in the safekeeping of the British Museum, is recorded as having been given to Ascanio Condivi in preparation for a finished painting. 25 In a letter of 26 November 1531, this time from Antonio Mini to Schomberg, we are told that the painting was not yet finished. Buonarroti 1965–83: III.340–1.

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Fig. 10.9. Michelangelo, Study for the Risen Christ, 1532, red chalk on paper, 23.5 × 8.2 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence.

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Fig. 10.10. Michelangelo, Study for the Risen Christ, 1532, red chalk on paper, 14.8 × 23.7 cm. Casa Buonarroti, Florence.

brainstorms, both rapidly sketched in red chalk and intended for the figure of the risen Christ and now in the Casa Buonarroti (Figs. 10.9 and 10.10). As we have seen, Colonna did not commission the Noli me tangere directly from Michelangelo, relying instead not on one but two middlemen to secure the work on her behalf. This more private, quasi-anonymous approach to patronage strikes a contrast with two of the most notable examples of Italian female patronage in the early cinquecento, both involving altarpieces: Atalanta Baglioni’s request from Raphael for an Entombment in 1507, intended to stand as a votive offering for her slain son Grifonetto in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia; and the widowed Elena Baiardi’s request from Parmigianino for the Madonna of the Long Neck in 1534, commissioned for her family’s private chapel in Santa Maria dei Servi, Parma. Colonna’s circuitous process of securing Michelangelo’s design, subsequently animated by Pontormo’s brush, betrays a markedly different strategy. Yet this is not to say that she lacked agency in relation to her female counterparts, Baglioni and Baiardi. Rather, it aligns her quite closely with Isabella d’Este—and the Marchioness of Mantua’s favoured employment of artistic agents.26 26 Isabella’s commission and collecting practices are addressed by Campbell 2004. For the original letter exchanges between the Marchesa and her agents, see d’Este 2017.

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Encounter No fewer than six versions of Michelangelo’s original Noli me tangere design survive.27 Of varying sizes and painted supports, they introduce fascinating questions about the uses to which the copies were marshalled and, more broadly, the relationship between connoisseurship and devotion.28 As will be discussed at a later point here, both the Busto Arsizio and Casa Buonarroti panels most likely functioned as altarpieces. We now turn our attention to the first of this most expertly executed pair: meaning, the most likely original ordered by Schomberg, pictured in Fig. 10.2. The Lombard panel is smaller in dimensions than its second iteration in the Casa Buonarroti–124 × 95 versus 172 × 134 cm; both are of an almost identical ratio of height to length. The former panel thus corresponds to the client’s request with regard to the cartoon’s restricted scale (‘for a small place’)—and, it stands to reason, it may have been destined for a private chamber, conducive to intimate contemplation and prayer. An inventory of Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos’s palazzo in Naples in 1571 lists a work that may correspond to the Noli me tangere: ‘un quadro dela Maddalena (a painting of the Magdalene) tulerunt dominum meum’, a reference to John 20:13, describing how the Magdalene is met by a pair of angels in white inside Christ’s empty tomb (recalling the depiction by Holbein) who ask why she is weeping. To this, she responds: ‘They have taken my Lord away (Quia tulerunt Dominum meum) and I do not know where they have put him’.29 While 27 Hanging directly next to Bronzino’s Noli me tangere in the Casa Buonarroti is another variant, ascribed to Giovanni Battista Franco. Executed for Cosimo de’ Medici in c. 1537, the Venetian-born master’s composition is set against an ivy-covered rocky outcrop at left, doubling as a tonal foil for the Magdalene; the clinging vine of ivy, a well-known symbol of undying love and fidelity, here occupying the distance between Christ and his disciple, may bring to mind a sonnet by Colonna comparing the soul to uprooted ivy, with Christ’s cross doubling as the evergreen plant’s supporting frame (Stortoni (ed.) 1997: 73 (S2: 8 in Colonna 1982)). In the distance, a castle tower stands atop jagged rocks, a detail appropriated from Albrecht Dürer’s large Vision of Eustace engraving of c. 1501. For an additional copy worthy of renewed interest, now in Dayton, see Sobotik 1982. A fifth variation appeared most recently in a Hampel auction in Munich, 12 April 2018, lot 1183. Most striking is the third phantom arm of Mary, a clearly visible pentimento that reveals the as-yet anonymous copyist’s original intention to have the saint’s right arm echo the gesture of Christ’s own in its lower position and downward turn of the hand. The smallest version, measuring just 36.5 × 31.4 cm and executed on copper by Alessandro Allori, is cited later in the present essay. 28 The circulation and use of Noli me tangere images are addressed in Benay and Rafanelli 2015: 147–76, with particular attention to Michelangelo’s design (‘A Woman of Action … ’, 162–9). 29 Bernini 1996 sheds precious light on the cultural patrimony of the d’Avalos family as enumerated in the earliest surviving d’Avalos inventory belonging to Francesco, the estate’s sole heir upon the deaths of his father Alfonso in 1546 and his uncle Ferrante (whose properties accrued to Francesco upon Colonna’s death a year later, in 1547). The inventory of 1571 is cited by Donati

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the link between the quotation and Michelangelo’s conception remains rather tenuous, Andrea Donati has intriguingly proposed that the painting may have been catalogued by this Latin passage in exception to the other entries, which bear descriptions of the painting type or subject in vernacular Italian, because the notary was copying a biblical inscription upon a specially designed frame.30 The presence of the Casa Buonarroti version, meanwhile (see Fig. 10.3), is first mentioned in Florence in 1666, when it was transferred from the collection of Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici to the grand ducal collections. In the inventory of that year, the panel was identified, in fact, as the original version by Pontormo. The Florence panel is now most commonly attributed to Pontormo’s student, associate and lifelong companion Agnolo Bronzino. It is this work, as signalled by Vasari, that most plausibly served as the copy produced for the condottiero Alessandro Vitelli (1499/1500–54), signore of Città di Castello and later captain of the imperial troops under the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, in Florence.31 Notable in the Busto Arsizio panel, by way of striking differences with its close relative in the Casa Buonarroti, is the closer proximity of the two figures to us, especially that of Mary, as they appear pressed against the seemingly permeable picture plane. Technical clues as to authorship, meanwhile, often dwell in the details. Christ’s extended right hand in the Florence copy, upon close viewing, is not as confidently painted, the brushwork lacking in spontaneity and vigour. There is also the matter of the more intricately conceived townscape and city gate located above and to either side of the figural pair. No other artist has ever re-envisioned the Garden of Joseph of Arimethea in such a dramatic way. Jerusalem has been wholly transformed into a modern-day Tuscan town (of a kind), looming on a hilltop under ominous skies. At first, it is a bit difficult to discern what the circuit of walls are protecting. In reality, however, the town battlements—replacing Golgotha or Calvary—suggest a sense of contemporaneity: a particular place 2019: 330–2 as the first of seven (the last dated 1882) used to compile a list of art works owned by the family. 30 Donati goes on to suggest that Colonna may have left the Noli me tangere on Ischia (rather than taking it to Rome), testifying both to her great appreciation of Michelangelo and her growing adherence to Franciscan austerity and reformist spirituality around 1535 (Donati 2019: 333). 31 Roberto Longhi, Michael Hirst, Alessandro Cecchi and the large majority of other scholars writing on the Lombard panel who have followed (for example, Marongiu 2007) argue for its primacy—albeit not unanimously. Berti 1973 and Wallace 1988 have posited dissenting opinions. For a discussion of the attribution issue of the Lombard panel, see Vittoria Romani in Ragionieri (ed.) 2005: 86–8, cat. no. 21, who identifies the Noli me tangere in Busto Arsizio as ‘attributed to Pontormo’. Sickel 2007: 207–13 introduces new documentation on the Vitelli family in connection to the copy of the Noli me tangere.

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Fig. 10.11. Jacopo da Pontormo, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1519–23, oil on panel, 85 × 191 cm. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

not beyond a sixteenth-century viewer’s ken, in this case, part Fiesole, part Florence. In looking at this battlement-heavy representation of the Holy City, we may be reminded that just a few years earlier Michelangelo had been supervising the construction of Florence’s own angled bastions and bulwarks, when he was appointed governor general of the city’s fortifications during the city’s siege in April 1529. Here, it may also be worth recalling Pontormo’s attentiveness to architecture, part observed, part imagined, in his earlier Benintendi Adoration of the Magi (Epiphany) spalliera panel of 1519–23 for the Benintendi family palace, now in the Galleria Palatina (Fig. 10.11).32 Finally, there is the presence of the open sepulchre (absent from Bronzino’s version), just behind and directly between the two figures, at once signalling the distance between them and yet suggestive of how achingly narrow that distance really is—more symbolic than real. Mary’s left arm doubles as a continuation of the chain of walls as she attempts to encircle Christ’s with her own embrace, while the strip of barren land directly outside the fortifications snakes downward, leading the eye directly to the mouth of the tomb. As noted by Hirst, its very presence further speaks to the primacy of the Lombard panel (in relation to the Casa Buonarroti version), providing tangible testimony to Mary’s role as first witness to her risen ‘Rabboni, which is to say Master’ (John 20:16)—and, in turn, Colonna’s personal reverence for the Magdalene. In its pressing immediacy, the sepulchre’s spatial placement is radically different from Michelangelo’s earlier solution in his unfinished Entombment 32 Note, specifically, the similarity between the city gate at upper left of the Busto Arsizio Noli me tangere and the structure of the manger in the Adoration. Eclercy 2016: 102–5, cat. no. 31 (entry by Geronimus).

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Fig. 10.12. Michelangelo, Entombment, 1500–1, oil on panel, 161.7 × 149.9 cm. The National Gallery, London.

(and its suggestion of bodily transit), commissioned in September 1500 for a funerary chapel patronized by Giovanni Ebu, the deceased bishop of Crotone, and by around 1506 dedicated to the Magdalene, originally in the Roman church of Sant’Agostino (Fig. 10.12).33 In the Noli me tangere, the strange impression that the open tomb, so prominent at left, produces in its almost dangerous proximity to Christ is that the Redeemer has just stepped out of the sepulchre in the guise of a gardener, his heavy hoe awkwardly supported between his left hand and side. Before he has barely had a chance to take 33 The Entombment was abandoned upon Michelangelo’s departure for Florence in spring 1501. Nagel 2000 focuses on the image’s dual incorporation of narrative complexity and sacramental significance as venerable cult image.

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a step, it seems, the Magdalene is upon him. Here, as so often observed in Michelangelo’s painted imagery, space itself is conveyed primarily by means of human movement and tactile engagement. On balance, however, the grounding of the encounter, as envisioned by Michelangelo and executed by Pontormo, stands in stark contrast to the evasion, even near-cancellation, of narrative context in Pontormo’s earlier Deposition altarpiece (1525–28) for the Capponi family chapel in Santa Felicita, an uncanny vision ambiguous in temporality and devoid of any markers of place. Satisfying any curiosity we might have as to what form Bronzino’s own pictorial interpretation of the Noli me tangere might have subsequently taken, there survives a spectacular late example. Dating 1561 and now in the Louvre, the work is a banner image for John Shearman’s familiar definition of Mannerism as the ‘stylish style’ in its balletic pose and jewel-like, saturated palette (Fig. 10.13). This is a good place to introduce the question of intended function, as we know with confidence that Bronzino’s Paris panel was originally intended for the Cappella Cavalcanti in the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. While it remains possible that Colonna wanted her Noli me tangere from Michelangelo as a work of art—as a ‘Michelangelo’—it seems very unlike her to commission a religious work on a subject we know to have been of profound interest to her solely or even largely for reasons of artistic virtuosity and aesthetic pleasure, which might be associated with secular collectors.34 Much more likely, the image served, more specifically, as an affecting image for domestic devotion or as an altarpiece, albeit a small, private one, measuring just over 4 feet (1.2 m.) in height. In this context, it bears mention that in 1536, a few years after the completion of the Noli me tangere, Colonna received permission from Pope Paul III to celebrate mass and take communion in a private chapel in her own residence that already existed or was newly constructed.35 As for the subsequent copies by a variety of followers, it remains plausible that they may have been prized for their associations with Michelangelo and Pontormo as much as for their efficacy as aides to private prayer. This was certainly the case five centuries on. Alessandro Allori’s unusual example on copper—one of at least two known

34 On this point, I part ways with Donati 2019: 163–4, who posits that, largely on account of their dimensions, Titian’s Magdalene and Michelangelo-Pontormo’s Noli me tangere served an aesthetic, non-liturgical function. In terms of actual location, however, I am in agreement that the panel in question could have been situated on a wall—and did not necessarily belong on an altar. 35 Targoff 2018: 181.

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Fig. 10.13. Agnolo Bronzino, Noli me tangere, 1561, oil on panel, 289 × 194 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Fig. 10.14. Alessandro Allori, Noli me tangere, early 1560s–early 1570s, oil on copper, 36.5 × 31.4 cm. Sold, Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2012.

Noli me tangere variants made by the artist—has a particularly intriguing history, acquired as it was by Leo Steinberg in 1964 for $250 (Fig. 10.14).36 Approximately a decade after Pontormo’s completion (by proxy) of the Noli me tangere for Colonna, Michelangelo’s thoughts appear to have drifted 36 For Allori’s Noli me tangere on copper (datable to the early 1560s–early 1570s), see Christie’s, Old Master Paintings, Part II, 26 January 2016, New York: 23, no. 219 (also briefly mentioned in Falletti and Nelson (eds.) 2002: 224–5, cat. no. 42a (Nelson)). For Allori’s more personal take on the same subject, see his late version on panel, signed and dated 1599 and featuring a villa garden-like landscape: Christie’s, Renaissance, 29 January 2014, New York: 208–10, no. 173.

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Fig. 10.15. Nicolas Beatrizet (after Michelangelo), Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, c. 1546, engraving, 38.8 × 28.7 cm. British Museum, London.

back again to the same subject. Around 1542, the older artist, now in his late 60s, returned to the idea of a two-person religious drama, also drawn from the Gospel of John, in his Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (Fig. 10.15). Seen here in a preparatory black chalk study of c. 1542 in a private collection, this design too was intended for Vittoria Colonna and has even led one art historian to suggest that this later design—inspiring Beatrizet’s

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Fig. 10.16. Michelangelo, Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, c. 1542, black chalk on paper, 46.7 × 33. 7 cm. Private collection.

print in c. 1546—may have been intended as a pendant to the Noli me tangere (Fig. 10.16).37 I join Bernadine Barnes in expressing scepticism about such a hypothesis, given the much smaller scale of painted copies after the Christ 37 Costamagna 1994: 217. On the religious crisis of 1545–6 in relation to Colonna and Michelangelo (and the latter’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well and Cappella Paolina frescoes, both dating from those years), see Frommel 2013.

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Fig. 10.17. Master of the Saint Ursula Legend (central panel, The Sudarium borne by angels) and Filippino Lippi (wings, showing Christ and the Samaritan Woman and the Noli me tangere), Del Pugliese Triptych, 1490–1500, oil on panel, central panel: 49.5 × 31.5 cm, left panel: 56 × 15.5 cm, right panel: 55.5 × 15 cm. Seminario Patriarcale, Pinacoteca Manfrediniana, Venice.

and the Samaritan Woman design (the largest measuring 77 cm in height), as well as the project’s significantly later date.38 And yet the latter may certainly be considered a spiritual companion, a brilliant variation on a similar theme: that of sola fide, or ‘salvation through faith alone’, freely given and accepted. On a personal note with regard to Michelangelo, it is worth calling attention here to the now-elderly master’s own portrait medal cast by Leone Leoni in 1561, its enigmatic reverse showing a blind pilgrim led by a dog, an image possibly associated with Saint Paul’s 2 Corinthians, 5:7: ‘for we walk by faith, not by sight’.39 To return to Nicolas Beatrizet’s print after Michelangelo, both the Magdalene and the unnamed Samaritan Woman, the latter recognizing the Messiah at the well of Jacob, receive grace directly though the words of Christ. There does, in fact, survive a small-scale triptych (55 cm in height), commissioned by Francesco del Pugliese around 1490, that in a rare instance features, to either side of the Master of Saint Ursula’s Volto Santo, Filippino’s Lippi’s scenes of the two revelatory encounters: the Samaritan Woman at left and the Magdalene at right (Fig. 10.17). 38 Barnes 2013. 39 Convincingly proposed in Barolsky 1990: 44–6.

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Spiritual eroticism: touch and faith Saint, sinner, penitent, first witness, intercessor: Mary Magdalene was a conflation of several biblical female personae. 40 So too, Michelangelo and Pontormo’s collaborative vision interweaves issues of faith, gender and the senses, as activated by hearing and voice, a beloved’s gaze and sought—and evaded—touch. The Magdalene’s encounter in the garden with the risen Christ stands both as a parallel and as an antithesis to the doubting of Saint Thomas, an incredulous witness who is actually invited to touch: to reach into the gaping wound of Christ and thus to believe. On occasion, Christ is shown physically guiding, pulling Thomas’s hand toward and into his wound (Fig. 10.18). By contrast, the Magdalene is asked to believe by sight, the spoken word—and, above all, by her faith alone. This would have been recognized from the medieval period onward as the purest, most exalted form of faith. Her revelation is a private one and her conversion takes place in the moment of her aural recognition of Christ’s voice. The Magdalene became the model, for men and certainly for women, of affective piety. As Katherine Ludwig Jansen and Lisa Rafanelli have convincingly argued, her role as first witness presented concerns about the authority of women’s senses and the agency claimed through her own words and deeds. 41 There emerged strong resistance to the Magdalene’s authority and the ways in which it translated to female teaching and preaching—but it did not only come from Ambrose and Thomas Aquinas. Much of the opposition to her prime agency was expressed by female voices. These voices most often belonged to women who espoused particularly strong loyalties to the other Mary, the mother of Christ, prompting figures such as Francesca Romana, Margery Kempe and Birgitta of Sweden (all mothers, it should be noted), to adhere to the Eastern tradition of the Virgin Mary being first witness of the risen Christ, thus endowing her, as Ludwig Jansen writes, ‘with all female glory, including the Magdalene’s’. 42

40 With regard to the Magdalene’s sinful early life, it is worth noting that Vittoria Colonna was actively engaged in supporting the Casa delle Convertite in Rome’s via del Corso, an institution that took in prostitutes who wanted to redeem themselves without taking the veil as nuns. See Witcombe 2002: 281. 41 Seminal sources for Colonna’s cult of the Magdalene include: Och 2001 and Debby 2003, both focusing on Titian’s Pitti Magdalene; Agosti 2005; Hickson 2012; Rafanelli 2012; Benay and Rafanelli 2015; and Camaioni 2016. For rich veins of insight into the cult of the Magdalene in earlier periods, see Ludwig Jansen 2001. 42 Ludwig Jansen 2001: 31, 262–3.

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Fig. 10.18. Cima da Conegliano, Doubting of Saint Thomas with Bishop Magno, 1505, oil on panel, 215 × 151 cm. Gallerie dell’Academia, Venice.

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No traces of such ambivalence toward the Magdalene appear in the letters or sonnets of Colonna. Few noblewomen embodied the influence of the querelle des femmes more boldly than Colonna, who came to occupy the spiritual centre of the Catholic Reform movement. 43 Mary Magdalene was one of the querelle’s most charged symbols—and greatest role models—favoured not only by Colonna but other eminent gentildonne of her generation who heeded the apostolic calling. Notable among them was the fellow poet Veronica Gambara, dowager ruler of Correggio, who commissioned a fresco of the Magdalene by Antonio Allegri, best known as Correggio, in c. 1530 in preparation for a visit from Charles V.44 We know that Alfonso d’Avalos paid a visit to the Countess in the following year. The cult of the Magdalene is no less a part of Isabella d’Este’s story.45 Gambara wrote to Isabella in 1528, this time describing in her possession a different image of a kneeling, penitent Magdalene, her hands clasped to heaven, also executed by Correggio. 46 The letter no doubt was prompted by her knowledge of the Isabella’s fervent devotion to the saint. In 1517, the Marchioness of Mantua made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Magdalene at the Sainte-Baume (‘Holy Cave’ in which the saint was thought to have died), a Provençal journey recorded by her court secretary, Mario Equicola, in a treatise published after her return. As revealed in a papal letter dated 13 March 1537, Vittoria Colonna sought to make the same pilgrimage, her passage approved by Paul III, even though the relic sites were customarily off-limits to women.47 For reasons unknown, Colonna never embarked on this trip. Isabella was moved to describe the experience in several letters written during her visit, in which she recounts long periods spent in prayer in front of an entrancing statue of the Magdalene, shown lying on her side in a grotto while reading a sacred text. 43 See Rafanelli 2012, pointing the way to understanding how Michelangelo’s assertive reenvisioning of the Magdalene and subsequent paintings based on his design participate visually in a wider debate over the status and roles of women in society and religion—and reflect Colonna’s active role in shaping new views on sex and gender. 44 On the occasion of Charles V’s coronation in Bologna in 1530, Gambara is known to have helped facilitate a temporary reconciliation between warring factions. In March of that year and January 1533, the Emperor visited her in Correggio, and on the first visit signed a treaty (later broken) in which he promised her city would not again be besieged. Between 1546 and 1550 Charles V paid to have the walls of Correggio fortified. Gambara’s palace was luxuriously adorned, and, in advance of Charles V’s first visit, was not only provided with a new carriage road (suitably named the Viale dell’Imperatore) but decorated with wall paintings carried out by Correggio. On the episode, see Gambara 2014: 11–12. 45 Hickson 2012: 130–5. For the importance of the Magdalene as pious exemplar to female Renaissance patrons more broadly, see Matthews-Grieco 1999: 164–9. 46 Cartwright 1903: II.281. 47 Colonna 1892: 131–2 (letter LXXIX, from Rome, 13 March 1537), cited in Rafanelli 2012: 241.

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Fig. 10.19. Cristofano Allori, The Penitent Magdalene Lying in a Landscape, c. 1600, oil on copper, 29.6 × 43 cm. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

Clearly taken by this vision, Isabella began to order paintings after the sculptural prototype while still in France; dissatisfied with the results, she continued to commission copies upon her return to Mantua. Well aware of the saint’s significance to Colonna, Isabella wrote to her in 1533, offering a painted copy by an unspecified artist of what was most likely the reclining variant in her own possession. Thought to be destroyed, the original by Correggio recently has been traced to a newly discovered painting on panel.48 A sought-after and gifted copyist like his father, Cristofano Allori provides us with valuable variant of the original composition (most notably now set in an open landscape instead of before a cave), like his version of the Noli me tangere executed on copper (Fig. 10.19). 49 The Gonzaga inventory of 1627–8 48 The original version of the reclining Magdalene was long thought to be a portable painting on copper, formerly in Dresden and destroyed in 1945 (Spagnolo 2003, also identifying other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century copies.) David Ekserdjian 2019: 556–61, alternatively proposes a panel of smaller dimensions currently in a private collection as the prime version, dating it to c. 1519, soon after Isabella had visited Sainte-Baume. The well-preserved work features a pair of small pentimenti in the open book and a profusion of meticulously rendered plants in the foreground. 49 Allori’s copy may be one of the many that Filippo Baldinucci (Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, 1845–7) describes the artist making after a Correggio Reclining Magdalene treasured in the collection of the Gaddi family in Florence. Ekserdjian 2019: 558–9.

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listed several paintings representing Mary Magdalene, a number of them certainly ordered by Isabella; among them was another copy, in this case that of Titian’s Magdalene. Sally Anne Hickson eloquently describes—and connects—the moving spirits at the intersection of piety and proto-feminism in this period: Therefore, when Isabella Gonzaga became for a brief period the steward of the original painting of the Penitent Magdalene in the d’Avalos del Vasto collection in Naples, she shared in a circle of sacred patronage that extended from Vittoria Colonna to her grandmother Isabella d’Este and finally to her mother, Margherita Paleologa in Mantua. Through the figure of the Magdalene this network of women, bound by faith and family, met to renew their mutual devotion and to meditate on the figure of the Magdalene as a singular, powerful and distinctly female symbol of patience, penitence, transformation and Reform.50

With regard to Colonna specifically, the picture that emerges is that of a full-fledged promotional campaign for the Marchioness of Pescara, the prime agent of which was Alfonso d’Avalos. This cause culminated in Colonna’s poetic ‘introduction’ to Pietro Bembo in Bologna in 1530 and Ludovico Ariosto’s lavish praise for her in canto 37 of Orlando furioso in its 1532 edition.51 To be sure, Colonna herself was intensely engaged with the querelle. Before she fell out with Baldassare Castiglione over her clandestine circulation of the manuscript of Il Cortegiano (1528), she wrote him a letter of sincere appreciation of the work, dated 20 September 1524, in which she called attention to the defence of women in Book III as a passage of special meaning to her.52 Her cousin, the aristocrat, man-at-arms, and later bishop and cardinal Pompeo Colonna, wrote an impressively assertive treatise titled Apologia mulierum in the second half of the 1520s, dedicated to Colonna. The text became part of the critical debate in literary and theological circles on the importance and dignity of women in society, arguing for women’s capacities for rule—and thus claiming for them a role in administrative and political life. Finally, Paolo Giovio’s Dialogus de viris ac foeminis aetate nostra florentibus (Dialogue Concerning Men and Women Flourishing in Our Time), drafted soon after the Sack of Rome in 1527, also includes a forceful portrayal of Colonna. In his impresa (personal device) for the Marchesa, the 50 Hickson 2012: 130. 51 See Toscano 2000: 108–20. I am grateful to Virginia Cox for alerting me to this reference. 52 Colonna 1892: 23–6 (letter no. XVIII, from Marino, 20 September 1524), especially 25.

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Fig. 10.20. Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Detail, Noli me tangere, 1531–32, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy.

prelate-historian imagined Colonna’s humanism radiating like a bonfire atop Egyptian pyramids. While panegyrical in tone, Giovio’s Ischian dialogues are also brazenly salacious—featuring graphic descriptions of its subject’s physical attributes, especially her breasts.53 It must also be said that Michelangelo’s design for the Noli me tangere is of surprising yet undeniable erotic spirituality or spiritual eroticism in its own right, setting aside the false dichotomy between the two. Fraught with conflict, Pontormo’s painted Christ in fact appears to touch the Magdalene—to nearly touch her breast—thus dramatically violating his own instruction to Mary (Fig. 10.20). On this point, there is certainly a variance of opinion.54 But I say ‘appears’ and ‘nearly touches’ because, in my view, Christ’s right index finger hovers before Mary without quite making contact with her—silhouetted 53 See Gouwens 2015; Robin 2012. Instructive in the context of eroticism in Michelangelo’s devotional imagery is Forcellino and Prosperi 2001: 701–15. See also the chapter by Christopher Nygren in this volume. 54 See Kleinbub 2013.

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Fig. 10.21. Lucas van Leyden, Noli me tangere, 1519, etching, 13.2 × 16.8 cm. Albertina, Vienna.

against her red garment (and left breast proper) as she leans forward—and does so suggestively, by pointing to not only her breast but, more specifically, her heart. The moment captured in Pontormo’s finished image was meant to be seen as one pregnant with meaning—and expectation, the possibility of touch bestowed—and is thus defined by an unresolvable tension between the consummation of contact and the ultimate denial of corporeal mediation. This ambiguity largely dissipates in the copies after Michelangelo’s original design. Although exceedingly rare, there are, nonetheless, striking examples—most of them originating in Northern Europe—in which the risen Christ does indeed actively reach out and makes explicit contact with the head of the Magdalene (Fig. 10.21).55 In one fantastically evocative hagiographic legend, the Magdalene was said to have ordered the Angevin prince Charles of 55 For several more rare examples of Christ making direct contact with the head of the Magdalene, on either side of the Alps, see Bramantino’s Noli me tangere fresco of 1498–1500, originally in Santa Maria del Giardino, Milan, and now in the city’s Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco; Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s version of the same legend from 1507, now in Kassel; and a pair of images, both in Milan, by the Lombard master and Leonardo follower Bernardino Luini, in an overdoor fresco (part of a Passion cycle, c. 1513–15) to the left of the main altar of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, Milan, and in a reversed central pose, notable for the hovering hand

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Fig. 10.22. Skull of Mary Magdalene, discovered in 1200s, inset into reliquary. Basilica of Saint Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Provence, France.

Salerno—in a vision, while he was captive in an Aragonese prison cell—to travel to Saint-Maximin, where, in the year 1279, he would discover among a number of other relics an extraordinary one, called the noli me tangere. This sacred wonder was an actual piece of flesh still adhering to her otherwise bare skull, marking the spot where the risen Christ had touched her in the garden on Easter morning (Fig. 10.22).56 In the end, what an intensely empowering communion we are invited to imagine, Michelangelo-Pontormo’s painting destined for Colonna’s private of Christ that appears to make contact with the head of the kneeling Magdalene, his Noli me tangere on canvas (c. 1510–20, with workshop?) in the Ambrosiana. 56 Ludwig Jansen 2001: 44. The Dominican legend was not published until after 1458, in the Book of Miracles of Saint Mary Magdalene.

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quarters (or private chapel), where she would have gazed upon the moving representation of the Magdalene, the first to witness the risen Christ and, as the ‘Apostle to the Apostles’, the first to communicate this extraordinary experience to the now-eleven closest (male) followers of Jesus. Christ’s first appearance, given the Magdalene’s past before conversion, thus served as a powerful reminder that he had come to us not only for the righteous but for the sinners. How powerful a bond the uncompromising, reform-minded Colonna must have felt in the presence of Christ’s most fervent devotee—and one of her sex. In her own writings, the Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Christo (The Marchioness of Pescara’s Lament on the Passion of Christ, written in 1539–41 yet not published until 1556), Colonna in fact exudes a sense of disbelief as to why so many good people who had experienced contact with Christ during his lifetime were not present at the Crucifixion—who had abandoned the Saviour, including the four apostles. Colonna, by contrast, singles out the Magdalene for special praise, as one of the few followers of Christ who were there on Golgotha—and who did receive his grace. In receiving her painted Noli me tangere, Colonna was to embark on a transformative spiritual journey of her own and a richly fulfilling dialogue, one that she came to share for the next sixteen years, until her own death in 1547, with Michelangelo, her dear friend, ‘ideal reader’, and pious lover.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion Sapegno

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

Primary works Buonarroti, M. (1965–83) Il carteggio di Michelangelo, ed. P. Barocchi, G. Poggi, and R. Ristori, 5 vols. Florence. Colonna, V. (1546) Le rime spirituali. Venice. ––– (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome.

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d’Este, I. (2017) Isabella d’Este: Selected Letters, ed. and tr. D. Shemek. Tempe, AZ. Gambara, V. (2014) Complete Poems. A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. M. Martin and P. Ugolini. Toronto. Stortoni, L.A. (ed.) (1997) Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans, tr. M. P. Lillee and L. A. Storton. New York. Vasari, G. (1966–87) Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, 6 vols. Florence. ––– (1996) Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, tr. G. Du C. De Vere, with an introduction and notes by D. Ekserdjian, 2 vols. New York.

Secondary works Acidini, C., E. Capretti and S. Risaliti (eds.) (2014) 1564/2014 Michelangelo: incontrare un artista universale. Rome. Agosti, B. (2005) ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano e Michelangelo)’, in Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. P. Ragionieri. Florence: 71–93. Agosti, B. (ed.) (2007) Michelangelo, amici e maestranze: Sebastiano del Piombo, Pontormo, Daniele da Volterra, Marcello Venusti, Ascanio Condivi. Florence. Baert, B. (2011) Interspaces between Word, Gaze and Touch: The Bible and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages. Leuven. Bambach, C. (2016) ‘Leonardo, Michelangelo, and notions of the unfinished in art’, in Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, ed. K. Baum, A. Bayer, and S. Wagstaff (exhibition catalogue). New York: 30–41. ––– (2017). Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer (exhibition catalogue). New York. Barnes, B. (2013) ‘The understanding of a woman: Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman’, Renaissance Studies 27/5: 633–53. Barolsky, P. (1990) Michelangelo’s Nose: A Myth and its Maker. University Park, PA. Bellucci, R. and C. Frosinini (2002) ‘Un mito michelangiolesco e la produzione seriale: il cartone di Venere e Cupido’, in Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova bellezza ideale, ed. F. Falletti and J. K. Nelson (exhibition catalogue). Florence: 109–30. ––– (2006) ‘The replicas after the Venus and Cupid cartoon by Michelangelo’, in La peinture ancienne et ses procédés. Copies, repliques, pastiches, ed. J. Couvert and H. Verougstrete. Leuven: 51–8. Benay, E. and L. Rafanelli (2015) Faith, Gender and the Senses in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art: Interpreting the Noli Me Tangere and Doubting Thomas. Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT. Bernini, R. (1996) ‘La collezione d’Avalos in un documento inedito del 1571’, Storia dell’arte 88: 384-445.

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Berti, L. (1973) L’opera completa di Pontormo. Milan. Bianco, M. and V. Romani (2005) ‘Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’, in Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. P. Ragionieri. Florence: 145–64. Botte, M.-P., B. M. Briat-Philippe and M.-N. Maynard (2016) (eds.) Marie Madeleine, la Passion révélée (exhibition catalogue). Saint-Étienne. Brundin, A. (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Farnham. Camaioni, M. (2016) ‘Per “sfiammeggiar di un vivo e ardente amore”. Vittoria Colonna, Bernardino Ochino e la Maddalena’, in El Orbe Católico: trasformaciones, continuidades, tensiones y formas de convivencia entre Europa y América (siglos IV-XIX), ed. M. Lupi and C. Rolle. Santiago de Chile: 105–60. Campbell, S. J. (2004) The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. New Haven. Cartwright, J. M. (1903) Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539: A Study of the Renaissance, 2 vols. New York. Chapman, H. (2005) Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master. New Haven. Cody, S. J. (2018) ‘Andrea del Sarto’s Noli me tangere: sight, touch, and an echo of St Augustine’, Arion 26/2: 37–68. Costamagna, P. (1994) Pontormo. Paris and Milan. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Debby, N. B. A. (2003) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Titian’s Pitti “Magdalen”’, Woman’s Art Journal 24: 29–33. De Tolnay, C. (1970) The Medici Chapel. Princeton. Donati, A. (2019) Vittoria Colonna e l’eredità degli spirituali. Rome. Eclercy, B. (2016) Maniera: Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence. Munich and New York. Edelstein, B. (2021) ‘Dopo l’assedio. Pontormo e Michelangelo a Firenze tra repubblica e principato’, in Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna: amicizia, arte, poesia, spiritualità dall’assedio di Firenze all’apertura del Concilio di Trento, ed. V. Copello and A. Donati. Todi: D’Arte (forthcoming). Ekserdjian, D. (2019) ‘Correggio’s reclining “Magdalen” rediscovered’, Burlington Magazine 161: 556–61. Falletti, F. and J. K. Nelson (eds.) (2002) Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova bellezza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty. Florence. Forcellino, A. and A. Prosperi (2001) ‘Michelangelo: una devozione erotica?’, Atti dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei: Rendiconti classe di scienze morali storiche e filologiche 12/4: 699–750. Forcellino, M. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo: drawings and paintings’, in Companion: 270–313.

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Frommel, C. L. (2013) ‘Vittoria Colonna und Michelangelos religiöse Krise von 1545/1546’, in Synergies in Visual Culture: Festschrift for Gerhard Wolf, ed. M. De Giorgio, A. Hoffmann, and N. Suthor. Munich: 339–58. Gibaldi, J. (1987) ‘Vittoria Colonna: child, woman, and poet’, in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. K. M. Wilson. Athens, GA: 22–47. Gilbert, C. E. (2003) ‘What is expressed in Michelangelo’s non-finito’?, Artibus et Historiae 24/48: 57–64. Gouwens, K. (2015) ‘Female virtue and the embodiment of beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’s Notable Men and Women’, Renaissance Quarterly 68/1: 33–97. Hickson, S. A. (2012) Women, Art, and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua. Farnham and Burlington, VT. Hirst, M. (2004) ‘Tre saggi su Michelangelo’, tr. B. Agosti. Florence: 4–29. ––– (2011): Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame 1475–1534. New Haven. Hirst, M. and G. Mayr (1997) ‘Michelangelo, Pontormo und das Noli me tangere für Vittoria Colonna’, in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos, ed. S. Ferino-Pagden (exhibition catalogue). Vienna: 335–44. Kleinbub, C. (2013) ‘To sow the heart: touch, spiritual anatomy, and image theory in Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere’, Renaissance Quarterly 66/1: 81–129. Ludwig Jansen, K. (2001) The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton. Luise, F. (2006) I d’Avalos: un grande famiglia aristocratica napoletana nel Settecento. Naples. Matthews-Grieco, S. F. (1999) ‘Models of female sanctity in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy’, in Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present, ed. L. Scaraffia and G. Zarri. Cambridge, MA.: 159–75. Nagel, A. (1997) ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, The Art Bulletin 79 / 4: 647–68. ––– (2000) Michelangelo and the Reform of Art. Cambridge. Och, M. (2001) ‘Vittoria Colonna and the commission for a Mary Magdalene by Titian’, in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss. Kirksville, MS: 193–223. Prodan, S. R. (2014) Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry, and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge. Quiviger, F. (2014) ‘Art and the senses: representation and reception of Renaissance sensations’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Renaissance, ed. H. Roodenburg. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: 169–202. Rafanelli, L. M. (2012) ‘Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere for Vittoria Colonna, and the changing status of women in Renaissance Italy’, in Mary Magdalene: Iconographic

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Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, ed. M. A. Erhardt and A. M. Morris. Leiden: 223–48. Ragionieri, P. (ed.) 2005. Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo. Florence. Randolph, A. (2014) Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian FifteenthCentury Art. New Haven. Robin, D. (2012) ‘The breasts of Vittoria Colonna’, California Italian Studies 3/1: 1–15. Schulz, J. (1975) ‘Michelangelo’s unfinished works’, The Art Bulletin 57/3: 366–73. Sickel, L. (2007) ‘Pontormos Noli me tangere in Rom: Neue Dokumente zu einem Prestigeobjekt der Familie Vitelli’, in Curiosa Poliphili: Festgabe für Horst Brederkamp, ed. N. Hegener, C. Lichte, and B. Marten. Leipzig: 207–13. Sobotik, K. (1982): ‘Michelangelo’s lost Noli me tangere’, The Dayton Art Institute Bulletin 38: 5–8. Spagnolo, M. (2003) ‘Correggio’s reclining Magdalen: Isabella d’Este and the cult of St Mary Magdalen’, Apollo 157/496: 37–45. Suthor, N. (2003) ‘Bad touch? Zum Körpereinsatz in Michelangelo/Pontormos “Noli me tangere” und Caravaggios “Ungläubigem Thomas”’, in Der stumme Diskurs der Bilder: Reflexionsformen des Ästhetischen in der Kunst der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. K. Kruger, R. Preimesberger and V. von Rosen. Munich: 261–81. Targoff, R. (2018): Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Toscano, T. R. (2000) Letterati, corti, accademie. La letteratura a Napoli nella prima metà del Cinquecento. Naples. Walker Bynum, C. (2011) Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York. Wallace, W. E. (1988) ‘Il Noli me Tangere di Michelangelo: tra sacro e profano’, Arte Cristiana 76: 443–50. ––– (2010). Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times. Cambridge. Witcombe, C. L.C. E. (2002) ‘The chapel of the courtesan and the quarrel of the Magdalens’, The Art Bulletin 84/2: 273–92. Wivell, M. (ed.) (2017) Sebastiano and Michelangelo. London.

About the author Dennis Geronimus is Professor of Art History at New York University. Past publications include Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange (2006). He co-curated the first-ever exhibition on Piero at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2015). His current book project is titled Jacopo da Pontormo: Overcoming Nature.

11. ‘Leading Others on the Road to Salvation’: Vittoria Colonna and Her Readers* Abigail Brundin

Abstract This paper considers the question of Vittoria Colonna’s readership beyond the poet’s intimate circle of friends and associates. It asks who was reading Vittoria Colonna in print in the sixteenth century and how they were reading her. It examines in particular the passage from ‘high’ to ‘low’ in the print circulation of rime spirituali, and the role played by Colonna’s work in defining the reception of the genre, both during its formative period in her lifetime, and in the later sixteenth century, when it had become one of the dominant lyric traditions of the age. Keywords: lyric poetry, readers, reception, print publication

A small pamphlet printed in Brescia in 1538, authored by Pietro da Lucca but incorrectly attributed to Cherubino da Spoleto, offers advice for widows on how to lead a spiritual life. Surviving in a single copy in the Biblioteca Universitaria in Padua, the pamphlet contains twenty-four sheets of dense type on cheap paper in ottavo.1 Put together by the pamphlet seller active in the Veneto known as Ippolito Ferrarese, the work offers notably pragmatic * This article presents research conducted as part of the project funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Cambridge 2013–17, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Renaissance Italian Home, 1400–1600 (PIs Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard, Mary Laven). Warm thanks, too, to Virginia Cox and Shannon McHugh for their valuable editorial interventions. 1 Opera santissima 1538. The pamphlet is Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria 112.b.147/2. For more on this work, see Petrella 2011; Salzberg 2014.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch11

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advice on how to live a good Christian life. The pamphlet urges its reader to keep only virtuous company, to adopt modesty in dress and to practise generosity to the poor. It also includes a strongly apotropaic element, in a final section containing a long prayer and accompanying rubric: ‘whoever says this prayer of Saint Augustine kneeling with a blessed candle in his hand for a period of forty days will receive all legitimate graces from the Virgin Mary. And he will do this for the health of his soul’.2 The prayer and rubric indicate that the pamphlet sought to engage, alongside more standard devotional readers, individuals whose desire for texts was closely related to their perceived protective and intercessory qualities.3 Ippolito Ferrarese’s pamphlet acts as a useful starting point for the following discussion because of the notable fact that it was dedicated to Vittoria Colonna. Colonna’s name is included prominently on the title page: ‘To the most Illustrious Lady Vittoria[,] esteemed Marchioness of Pescara’ (All’Ilustre S. Vittoria digniss. Marchesa di Pescara). In addition, a dedicatory letter inside the work alludes to a personal relationship between the aristocratic poet and the ‘pedlar’ (cerretano), Ippolito Ferrarese. Ippolito mentions ‘the many wonderful favours’ done on his behalf by Colonna. He also refers to his knowledge that Colonna has in the past been prevented from leading the purely spiritual life to which she aspired: ‘considering again your many activities, which did not leave you much time for withdrawal from worldly concerns to devote yourself to spiritual exercises, which would have been your wish’. 4 Finally, he presumes to offer her advice on how to use his pamphlet in her personal devotional reading: his work must be read at least once a month, and acted on as closely as possible.5 We should probably assume that Ippolito Ferrarese’s personal relationship with Vittoria Colonna was a fantasy: it seems highly unlikely that this cheap pamphlet really made its way into the library of the Marchioness of Pescara, who had higher literary standards and kept much better company.6 Instead, we can read this dedication as a canny marketing ploy on the part 2 ‘Qualunque persona dira questa oration di santo Agustino ingenocchioni co[n] una ca[n]dela benedetta in mano per spacio di quara[n]ta giorni ottenera dalla gloriosa vergina Maria ogni gratia licita. Et q[ue]sto si fara in salute dell’a[n]i[m]a sua’. Opera santissima 1538: unpaginated. 3 On devotional reading in the Renaissance period, including ‘reading’ as practised by the illiterate, see Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018: 149–74. 4 ‘Considerato anchora le molte operationi vostre lequale non permette[n]do che molto tempo habbiate a potervi qualche volta sequestrare dalle mondane facende & darvi alli spirituali esserciti, come saria il desiderio vostro’. 5 Opera santissima 1538: unpaginated. 6 On Colonna’s life see the recent biography by Targoff 2018.

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of the seller of the pamphlet, who recognised Colonna’s status as one of Italy’s most famous widows and thus the perfect emblem with which to brand his product. Her presumed acceptance of Ippolito’s advice confers lustre and nobility on a cheap pamphlet, thereby increasing its market value. What is most interesting about this dedication, as Tatiana Crivelli has made clear in her comprehensive work on Colonna’s print history, is that from it we can infer that those consumers who bought material at the very cheapest end of the print market were aware of Vittoria Colonna as early as 1538, and aspired to own, if not her works (which had only had a single printed edition, in the same year), then other works that were associated with her.7 The use of Colonna’s name in the context of Ippolito Ferrarese’s pamphlet suggests that the reach of her ‘brand’ was broader and deeper than we might previously have imagined and that it potentially predated any complete printed editions of her works. It also indicates that the editio princeps of Colonna’s Rime, published in 1538, had an enormous and immediate impact.8 It seems that Colonna’s name was from early on closely associated with a devotional printed production that was engaged, practical and populist. There is other evidence that adds to this picture of Colonna’s presence and influence at the lower end of the print market. Crivelli traces the numerous ways in which the market for cheap print rapidly adopted and adapted Colonna’s image and works at the close of the 1530s. In particular, she cites two editions of Colonna’s Rime published in 1539, following the success of the first edition, that were produced by Niccolò d’Aristotele de’ Rossi, or Zoppino, publisher of short, popular books in ottavo that were aimed at the widest possible readership.9 There is a marked contrast between Zoppino, the low-end publisher, and Colonna, the high-end author, which might cause us to pause and reconsider her status more carefully. As Crivelli states, ‘this, in short, is the evidence that points to the existence of popular channels for the distribution of printed copies of the Rime, running parallel to but for obvious reasons not easily connected to Colonna and the elite circles in which she moved’.10 In this essay I will endeavour to cast some further light on the so-called ‘popular’ or ‘ordinary’ reader, the consumer of the kinds of cheap printed products alluded to above, in order to ponder what they might have gained 7 8 9 10

See Crivelli 2016: 80–3. Colonna 1538. Colonna 1539; Crivelli 2016: 90–6. Crivelli 2016: 83.

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from reading Vittoria Colonna’s work, and spiritual sonnets more generally. Ippolito Ferrarese’s pamphlet, with its apotropaic closing prayer, alerts us to the possibility that readers might have sought something rather different from the texts they bought than pure literary artistry, although they might have sought that too. Many readers, in other words, were in search of a printed text that was applied and spiritually useful. The book market as a whole, from the dawn of print, was driven in large part by consumers who wanted a useful and practical product. Studies of printed best-sellers beginning in the late fifteenth century point out that the main consumers of the print market from the start were students and clerics, in search of texts that would aid them in their studies and professional lives.11 In the closing years of the sixteenth century, after the final sessions of the Council of Trent had ended, the ‘practical’ nature of devotional print became even more marked. This newly sharpened focus derived substantially from the details of the Roman Index of Prohibited Books of 1564, which defined devotional literature for the lay population as that ‘containing the good rules of life, prayer, confession and similar matters’.12 Devotional literature for broad consumption had a clear remit from the Church, to teach morals and good practices to ordinary people. The considerable expansion of the publishing industry in the later sixteenth century encompassed a major increase in publication of this kind of devotional material, including the introduction of many new authors and works, as well as the updating and reissuing of older texts and increased production of the cheap pamphlet printing aimed at the lower end of the book market.13 With this expansion, of course, came many new kinds of readers.14 How might we make a link between Colonna’s rime spirituali and these new readers, in search of affordable, engaged and useful devotional books? We first need to confront a question of definitions: can Colonna’s rime spirituali be categorised as devotional literature? Does her poetry fit the Tridentine model of a spiritually engaged and pragmatic text, aimed at aiding the reader in developing an active faith? The answer, in my view, is offered by the poet herself, who while she never abandons a commitment to art and beauty, makes clear that her work should be read for spiritual profit. This can be seen, for example, in the reference to her desire to ‘warm some gentle heart’ with her poetry, and her fear that she has become too 11 12 13 14

Milway 2000. See Barbieri 2001: 112–15. See Rozzo 1993. See the discussion in Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018: 216–48.

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good at turning out a refined sonnet without investing it with the required soul.15 It is clearly expressed in her stated aim to ‘write for others all that he [Christ] suffered’ by deploying the instruments of the Crucifixion as her poetic tools.16 Her famous sonnet in praise of Saint Luke’s painting of the Virgin argues that the spirit, not the skill, is what confers value on the work of art.17 As I have argued elsewhere, although she may not have directly authorised a printed edition of her poems, Colonna did participate actively in their scribal dissemination, and as a poet she was very engaged with the act of being read and thought carefully about what that act ought to provide to her readers.18 Other poets were more explicit in articulating the role that rime spirituali should play in active and engaged devotional reading and education. Gabriele Fiamma, in his own Rime spirituali first published in 1570, after acknowledging Colonna’s role as ‘the first to have begun to write with dignity of spiritual matters in lyric poetry’, goes on in an address to his readers to criticize parents who give their children dishonest works to use when they are learning to read, including Petrarch and Boccaccio, so that children who are trying to learn the Tuscan language are forced to imbibe unchristian material.19 Fiamma cites biblical poetic precedents in articulating what he is trying to do in his collection, which is, he claims, an attempt to return Tuscan poetry to its sacred roots. He justifies his decision to provide his own explanation of the texts, notably, because ‘citing them, and explaining them, and almost chewing them over could not be anything but a great consolation for the unlettered’.20 The layout of the pages of Fiamma’s text, with long commentaries that engulf the poems, in fact makes it seem very far from being a work that might appeal to the simple people whom he cites as his intended readership, but the intention is nonetheless notable. His work is divine poetry, inspired by the first poetry of the Bible, but the poems are also useful and engaged devotional tools, to be used in the education of 15 ‘Et s’alcuna di lor un gentil core / avien che scaldi’. See the sonnets ‘S’in man prender non soglio unqua la lima’ (S1: 4), and ‘Temo che ’l laccio, ov’io molt’anni presi’ (S1: 179), in Colonna 2005: 136–9. Numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982. 16 ‘Sì ch’io scriva ad altrui quel ch’Ei sostenne’. See ‘Poi che ’l mio casto amor gran tempo tenne’ (S1: 1), in Colonna 2005: 56. 17 See ‘Mentre che quanto dentro avea concetto’ (S2: 23), in Colonna 2005: 90. 18 See Brundin 2016a and Brundin 2016b. 19 ‘la prima, c’ha cominciato a scrivere con digità in Rime le cose spirituali’. Fiamma 1570, dedicatory letter (unpaginated). On Fiamma’s prefatory statement of poetic purpose in his Rime spirituali, see Cox 2011: 32–5. 20 ‘il dichiararlo, e spiegarlo, e quasi ruminarlo a’ semplici non potrebbe esser se non di grandissima consolatione’.

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children and the guidance of the unlettered. It seems very significant, given this intention, that Fiamma clearly cites Colonna as his poetic model, the one who led where he now endeavours to follow.

Marking books An examination of readers’ annotations provides a lens through which to examine the manner in which texts of rime spirituali were approached by their original readers.21 The most famous annotation in a work by Colonna is no doubt Michelangelo’s signature in a 1558 edition of her poems now in the British Library, although Michelangelo was far from being an ‘ordinary’ reader of his friend’s poetry.22 Partial but suggestive evidence exists for anonymous readers at work on Colonna’s texts. In an edition of Rime spirituali di diversi eccellenti poeti toscani raccolte da G. Vitale, published in Naples in 1574, most of the second half of the volume is given over to Colonna’s poetry.23 This is a small publication in ottavo, precisely the kind of work we might imagine to be within the budget of the ‘ordinary’ reader. A careful hand has been through the book, annotating the individual sections with brief titles that will help to guide him or her back to particular poems by theme, presumably poems which are of particular interest to this reader (Fig. 11.1). So, for example, an annotated title clarifies that the subject of the following poem is the ‘Pianto di Ch[rist]o alla tomba di Lazaro’. Other annotations provide similar thematic information. The names of the poets are printed in the section headings, so it is clearly the subject matter, and not the identities of particular poets, that interests this reader. He or she also demonstrates knowledge of some of the texts in this anthology, or perhaps just poetic good sense, in correcting verses where there is a clear typographical error. Vittoria Colonna has the largest number of poems of any author in this anthology, thirty-six poems to Bembo’s nine and Veronica Gambara’s single sonnet. The annotator has been equally busy with Colonna’s verses, demonstrating particular attention to certain poems, and including notations that suggest temporal markers, dashes and lines, as if poems might have been 21 On annotations in Renaissance books, see Sherman 2008; and for Italy, Richardson 2004a. See also the discussion in Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018: 153–8. 22 The edition in question, Colonna 1558, contains the commentary on the sonnets by Rinaldo Corso. The copy containing Michelangelo’s signature (although its identification is disputed by some critics) is British Library C.28.a.10: 392. 23 Vitale (ed.) 1574. The copy consulted is Newberry Library: Case Y 7184.7465.

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Fig. 11.1. Giovanbattista Vitale, Rime spirituali di diversi eccellenti poeti toscani. Naples, Horatio Salviani, 1574. Page view with thematic annotation. Case Y 7184 7465, Newberry Library, Chicago.

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used for active meditation or recitation. It seems very significant that this collection of rime spirituali by various authors, both living and dead (the anthology includes Petrarch and Sannazaro, for example) is dominated by Colonna’s voice, although her presence is not mentioned on the title page or otherwise advertised or promoted. It is almost as if an anthology of rime spirituali, simply by appearing with that title, carries the expectation that Colonna will be the dominant voice, as, to use Fiamma’s words again, ‘the first to have begun to write with dignity of spiritual matters in lyric poetry’, and thus the acknowledged master of the genre. The manner of reading rime spirituali by theme rather than author, as well as Colonna’s striking dominance in anthologies of the genre, are both clearly in evidence in a second anthology, the Libro primo delle rime spirituali published in Venice in 1550 by the publisher who worked ‘Al segno della Speranza’.24 This little ottavo edition is the first of three published volumes in the same series.25 In the first volume a vast middle section is given over to Colonna, the dominant author by some way, along with Petrarch, included in this anthology in his spiritualised version by Girolamo Malipiero.26 In this text there was no need for a careful owner to add subject headings to guide the reading of the poems: the printer has already provided this framework, in the form of printed headers that advertise the devotional theme of each poem, grouped by subject as well as by author. The editorial intervention in this book echoes the annotations added to a personal copy by the reader of Rime spirituali di diversi eccellenti poeti toscani raccolte da G. Vitale, and reinforces the impression that this kind of devotional, thematic reading was widespread, an approach that runs counter to our author-dominated approach to these works today.27 An annotator has been at work in the Libro primo delle rime spirituali in a different way, however, in order to cancel out the name of one undesirable author, striking out Pietro Aretino (the name, but notably, not the poems themselves).28 As with the previous anthology, Colonna’s dominant poetic presence is not advertised or otherwise announced on the title page, but this anthology really serves

24 Libro primo 1550, published by a certain Giovanni della Speranza. Newberry Library: Case miniature Y 7184.503. 25 For an analysis of this text and its companion volumes, see Auzzas 2005. 26 Malipiero 1536. On Malipiero’s Petrarca spirituale, see Quondam 1991: 203–62. See also the essay by Andrea Torre in this volume. 27 For a seminal analysis of lyric anthologies of the period see Quondam 1974. 28 Aretino’s complete works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559.

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as an edition of Colonna’s works under another name, containing a total of 212 of her sonnets as well as the Trionfo di Cristo.29 A final example of an annotator at work on a collection of Rime, this time poetry not by Colonna but by another author, provides a useful comparative view of the way in which a reader might adapt their book of rime spirituali to make it more useful and profitable as a devotional tool. Ferrante Carafa’s Rime spirituali della vera gloria humana was published in Genoa in 1559.30 Carafa’s work is a long poem spanning four books or sections, followed by four further books that treat ‘true divine glory’. A copy now in the Newberry Library has an ownership inscription with a markedly devotional bias on the title page, as well as annotations in the same hand on the final table of contents which pick out religious topics of particular relevance (Fig. 11.2). So for example, the owner has added a note reading 12 Articoli della S[ant]a fede (twelve articles of the holy faith) and la resurrettion[e] (the resurrection) on the same page. The thematic annotations added to this text, acting as an aide memoire to guide the reader quickly to significant sections of the text, once again constitute useful evidence of devotional reading of a poetic text via the subject matter, rather than by author. The marginal notation helps the reader to locate the poems that treat of the Crucifixion, for example, or of the Ascension of Christ, perhaps in order to conduct reading that was structured by saints’ days and other religious festivals.31 These examples reinforce our hypothesis that readers were alert to the profit to be derived from their books of poetry and keen to read them well, meaning with a clear understanding of the devotional themes they contained. Let us turn back to the anthology Libro primo delle rime spirituali, containing 213 poems by Colonna, which has further interesting things to tell us about the reception of her work. Lyric anthologies of rime, on all kinds of topics including spiritual, were a best seller through the sixteenth century: Diana Robin’s recent work has underlined Colonna’s important role in particular as a female presence in the Giolito series of anthologies.32 The Libro primo delle rime spirituali is a rather different artefact however, not least because the quantity of poems by a single author, Colonna, is so far out of line with the rest of the collection. With such a large selection of 29 Auzzas demonstrates in her analysis that Colonna’s poems are ‘borrowed’ wholesale from the 1548 Valgrisi edition of her poetry: see Auzzas 2005: 210. 30 Carafa 1559. Newberry Library: Case Y 712.C234. 31 See the discussion of devotional reading at home in Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018: 149–74; as well as the various essays in Faini and Meneghin (eds.) 2018. 32 Robin 2016.

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Fig. 11.2 Ferrante Carafa, Le rime spirituali della vera gloria humana in libri quattro, et in altrettanti della divina. Genoa, Antonio Belloni, 1559. Detail of index with thematic annotations. Case Y 712. C234, Newberry Library, Chicago.

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poems this is really a surreptitious edition of the poet’s work disguised as an anthology. As such, it clearly cements Colonna’s status as the standard bearer of this genre. The manner of the work’s reception is altered significantly, however, by the fact that Colonna’s poems are to be read in conversation with the work of other authors of rime spirituali. These include the spiritualised and updated Petrarch in Malipiero’s rewriting, alongside Pietro Bembo, Veronica Gambara, Lodovico Dolce, Francesco Maria Molza, Alessandro Piccolomini and other less well-known names such as Agostino Torti and Don Giovanni del Bene, who opens the volume. Other women writers included are Laura Terracina and Tullia D’Aragona. The volume contains a total of forty-six authors. The book refuses the possibility of marketing itself as a single-voiced edition of a canonical author by failing to allude anywhere to the quantity of work by Colonna that it contains. The title page does mention in the standard way the presence of new and unpublished material, but without reference to particular authors; and notably all three volumes in the series lack any of the paratextual material one might expect from a book of this kind, such as addresses to the reader, but remain entirely ‘anonymous’, editorially speaking. The motto surrounding the printer’s device is notably devotional: ‘In these vain things that all desire / place not your faith, but securely / fix on the path that leads you to the highest good’.33 The inference is that reading the devotional contents of the book, the rime spirituali, will be part of the process of making out the true path to heaven. The intermingling of large numbers of poems by two very famous names, Petrarch (albeit bowdlerised) and Colonna, with one or two by a number of other authors, reinforces the sense that it is the work’s utility as a devotional aid, not its poetic status as a canonical text, which will attract a readership. The small, pocket-book size reinforces the impression of a work to be carried and used daily for on-going devotional profit. The work of Margaret Aston, among others, reminds us that the size of a book has a direct bearing on its reading and reception.34 Finally, this anthology offers a direct connection to the many settings of spiritual madrigals in the period, as the poet who opens the collection, Giovanni del Bene (or dal Bene), a Veronese nobleman, also compiled the first volume of spiritual madrigals to appear in print, the Musica spirituale published in Venice in 1563, which was made

33 ‘In queste vanita ch’ognun desia / non poner tua speranza, ma sicuro / scorgi il camin ch’al sommo ben t’invia’. 34 Aston 2004; see also Grendler 1993.

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up in the main of settings of his own compositions.35 Del Bene’s musical collection formed part of the same drive to produce useful works in print for devotion: his intention was to make a collection of spiritual music, as is clearly stated on the title page, ‘for use by Christian and pious persons’ (à utilità delle persone christiane & pie). As literary scholars, our tendency is to overlook this dual function of rime spirituali, which could be read, alone or aloud in a group, of course, but also set and sung to music, so that the profit to be derived from the verses expands ever further and also, notably, touches an audience that does not need any form of literacy to engage with the work.36

Pamphlets of ‘rime spirituali’ Thus far we have ranged across a few different sources in an attempt to get closer to ways in which rime spirituali including Colonna’s might have been read and used as a devotional tool by a wide audience. There is one further type of evidence that we can usefully bring into this discussion, material that was published at the very cheapest end of the print spectrum, that is the pamphlets of only a few pages that advertise themselves as containing rime spirituali by unnamed authors. These small pamphlets were printed on cheap paper with crude woodcuts, and often offered the reader a protective function that was not always licit.37 In many cases printer’s details and dates are absent from these works. Clues about multiple works produced by individual presses can be gleaned from the reuse of the simple woodblock images, as well as from other factors such as size and layout of text. Many of the prayers and other texts clearly advertise intercessory properties. A first example is entitled Rime spirituali raccolte dalla sacra scrittura.38 This very short pamphlet contains only four pages of text and lacks a printer’s name, but it does provide the information that it was printed in both Bologna and Siena in 1575. The title page is followed by three pages of a poem in ottava rima in twelve stanzas on the topics described in the title, including the creation of the world and the life and Passion of Christ. Notably the pamphlet 35 Musica 2001. See also Haar 1986: 121–2. 36 On the singing of lyric poetry, see, as a starting point, Richardson 2004b. 37 On the concerns around the use of printed brevi and apotropaic prayers, see Skemer 2006; Tycz 2018. More generally on cheap print of this kind, see as a starting point the work by Salzberg 2014. 38 Rime spirituali 1575. The copy consulted was Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Stamp. Cappon. V.686/5.

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contains no sonnets, or rime in the traditional sense. The opening stanza of the long poem in ottava alludes to the six days that God took to make the world and extolls him as the one ‘on whom all living beings now have their eyes fixed’.39 The poem then goes on to describe, with commendable brevity, the key elements of the Christian story, as the title promises, and ends with an admonition to readers to make sure to live a pious life, with a warning of the consequences if they fail in this duty: Quel che hor voglio da te popolo mio, e, che tu osservi la Christiana fede e che tu creda in questo vero Iddio, e nel battesmo santo, che ci diede ch’andar conviene col Demonio rio chi non è battezzato, & chi non crede e piu beati voi d’altri sarete, se non havendo visto creder[e]te. 40 What I now want from you my people / is that you observe the Christian faith / and that you believe in the true God / and in holy baptism, that he gave us / and it behoves the unbaptised to go / with the wicked Devil, and the unbelievers / but you will be more blessed than others / if you believe not having seen.

Two works of a similar kind, also advertising themselves on the title page as rime spirituali, were printed under the direction of Cristoforo Cieco da Forlì, or Cristoforo Scanello, a cantastorie or troubadour known for his performances in public places. Scanello is an interesting character who helps us to shed some light on the function of these cheap poetic pamphlets. A poet and historian as well as performer, he published his works in various locations across Italy, from Naples in the south to Mantua and Genoa in the north.41 The pamphlets of a few pages containing his own compositions were printed to be sold during or after a performance in the piazza, and while much of his output consisted of historical chronicles, Scanello produced two collections entitled rime spirituali. The first of these, Rime spirituali: Nelle quali si contiene le pietose lagrime, che fece San Pietro, doppo l’haver negato il

39 ‘in c’hoggi hanno i viuenti gl’occhi fissi / vera luce’. 40 Rime spirituali 1575: page unnumbered. 41 See Pasini 1937.

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suo Signore contains eight leaves of sixteen printed pages.42 The main item is once again a long poem in ottava rima. On the final page appear two sonnets that are also advertised on the title page, which treat the Incarnation and Passion of Christ. As with the previous example printed in Bologna and Siena, this work has also been printed in two different locations, Perugia and Siena, in 1579, presumably following the locations of Scanello’s public performances. A second pamphlet by Scanello is entitled Nove rime spirituali and contains the stated nine poems on spiritual subjects. 43 This work was published in L’Aquila in 1580. A f inal example, published in Macerata in 1585, alerts us to the fact that these kinds of works were ubiquitous across the Italian peninsula, although their cheap materials and poor survival rate makes them rare finds in libraries today. La Pazzia del Cristiano contains four poems on six pages of printed text. 44 None of the poems is a sonnet, and none are of particular literary merit, but all contain orthodox devotional themes for reading silently or together, or perhaps, as with Scanello’s editions, for performance by a known cantastorie who visited Macerata and organised the publication. The publisher, Sebastiano Martelli, produced a number of cheap devotional pamphlets of this kind in the later sixteenth century, and also worked frequently in collaboration with booksellers and pedlars who exploited the market offered by pilgrims visiting the nearby Holy House of the Virgin in Loreto. 45 What all these examples make clear is that those who made a living through performance and sale of the cheapest kinds of print were well aware of a market for works advertising themselves as rime spirituali, even though they fell short in delivering poetry that properly fitted the description. Although the contents of these works are very different from standard lyric poetry, the use of the title rime spirituali is analogous to Ippolito Ferrarese’s use of Vittoria Colonna’s name on the title page of his own pamphlet. The genre, in name at least, is borrowed from ‘high’ culture beginning with

42 Rime spirituali 1579. The copy consulted was Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Stamp. Cappon. V.686/17. 43 Nove rime spirituali 1580. A copy exists in the Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria in Messina. The printer, Giuseppe Cacchi, published other devotional pamphlets at his print shop in L’Aquila, as well as running a second shop in Naples: see Boureau 1989. 44 Pazzia 1585. The copy consulted is in the Biblioteca Alessandrina: XV.F2.19.35. A further copy can be found in the British Library. 45 See the discussion of Martelli in Brundin, Howard and Laven (eds.) 2018: 230–41.

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Colonna’s work,46 and redeployed to capture a new and much broader market, one that enjoys public poetry readings, aspires to purchase the works after a performance, but is also concerned that the work in question is devotional, affective and ‘correct’. The ‘high’ origins of the title, rime spirituali, add lustre and an illusion of authority to a very different kind of product, accessible to a much broader swathe of the buying public.

Conclusion Very briefly, this essay has aimed to begin the process of questioning and problematizing our assumptions about the ‘high’ status of Colonna’s verse, by looking at how ‘low’ it also reached, both via Colonna’s own words which were read and mined for spiritual utility in a number of cheap anthologies, and also via works that borrowed and bastardised her genre to reach new kinds of audiences. Colonna’s desire to ‘ignite sparks’ was seemingly a democratic one that spread beyond the traditional confines of elite culture.47 But reaching new audiences also implied a level of responsibility to ensure that they were guided in the correct way. Colonna’s ability to provide such guidance was not doubted by those who knew her. The title quotation is borrowed from a letter from the poet Luca Contile to a friend in which he describes a visit with Vittoria Colonna in 1541. In their conversation he has learned everything he needed to know, even though he has spoken and she has listened: ‘I see how well a Christian mind, if it has good judgement as its instrument, can succeed in leading others on the road to salvation’. 48 In large part through Colonna’s example, lyric poetry, or some approximation of it, came to play a central role in the drive to provide devotional instruction to ordinary readers after Trent.

46 Amedeo Quondam has claimed that Colonna’s work, in the innovative hands of the printer Niccolò d’Aristotele de’ Rossi (lo Zoppino), who was responsible for the 1539 edition of her poetry, effectively founded the genre of rime spirituali: see Quondam 2005: 161. 47 See again S1: 4, ‘S’in man prender non soglio unqua la lima’, Colonna 2005: 136–9. 48 ‘veggo quanto una christiana mente che habbia per istrumento un buon giuditio, sappia far caminar altrui per la strada de la salute … ’. Contile 1564: 23v–24v. See also for a discussion of this source, Brundin 2008: 175–6.

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Bibliography Abbreviations Companion Sapegno

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

Primary works Carafa, F. (1559) Le rime spirituali della vera gloria humana in libri quattro, et in altrettanti della divina. Genoa. Colonna, V. (1538) Rime della divina Vittoria Colonna marchesa di Pescara. Parma. ––– (1539) Rime della divina Vettoria Colonna marchesana di Pescara. N.p. ––– (1558) Tutte le rime … con l’espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso. Venice. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. Contile, L. (1564) Lettere. Pavia. Fiamma, G. (1570) Rime spirituali del R.D. Gabriel Fiamma … esposte da lui medesimo. Venice. Libro primo (1550) Libro primo delle rime spirituali. Venice. Malipiero, G. (1536) Il Petrarca spirituale. Venice. Musica (2001). Musica spirituale, libro primo (Venice, 1563), ed. K. Powers. Middleton, WI. Nove rime (1580) Nove rime spirituali, nelle quali si contiene un devoto capitolo al crocifisso, & quattro sonetti il primo al sacramento, il secondo del tremendo giudizio universale, il terzo al crocifisso, il quarto alli eletti suoi. Con una elezia della passione di Giesu nostro Signore. L’Aquila. Opera santissima (1538) Opera santissima e utile a qualunque fidel Christiano da trenta documenti di frate Cherubino da Spoliti heremita [in fact, Pietro da Lucca]. Brescia. Pazzia (1585) La Pazzia del Cristiano, e altre rime spirituali in lode della B. Vergine, con alcune stanze sopra la Passione di N. S. Macerata. Rime spirituali (1575). Rime spirituali raccolte dalla sacra scrittura. Quali contengono il fondamento della santa fede Christiana la creatione del Mondo, Et la vita, e passione di nostro Signor G. Christo. Bologna.

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Rime spirituali (1579) Rime spirituali, nelle quali si contiene le pietose Lagrime, che fece San PIETRO, doppo l’haver negato il suo Signore. Con due Sonetti, uno dell’Incarnatione, & l’altro della Passione di N. S. G. CHRISTO. Perugia. Vitale, G. (ed.) (1574) Rime spirituali di diversi eccellenti poeti toscani. Naples.

Secondary works Aston, M. (2004) ‘Lap books and lectern books: the revelatory book in the Reformation’, Studies in Church History 38: 163–89. Auzzas, G. (2005) ‘Notizie su una miscellanea veneta di rime spirituali’, in Rime sacre dal Petrarca al Tasso, ed. M. L. Doglio and C. Delcorno. Bologna: 205–20. Barbieri, E. (2001) ‘Tradition and change in the spiritual literature of the Cinquecento’, in Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, ed. G. Fragnito. Cambridge: 111–33. Boureau, A. (1989) ‘Franciscan piety and voracity: uses and stratagems in the hagiographic pamphlet’, in The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Chartier. Princeton: 15–58. Brundin, A. (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Farnham. ––– (2016a) ‘Poesia come devozione: leggere le rime di Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 161–75. ––– (2016b) ‘Vittoria Colonna in manuscript’, in Companion: 39–68. Brundin, A., D. Howard and M. Laven (eds.) (2018) The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy. Oxford. Cox, V. (2011) The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore. Crivelli, T. (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. Faini, M. and A. Meneghin (eds.) (2018) Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World. Leiden, Boston. Grendler, P. (1993) ‘Form and function in Italian Renaissance popular books’, Renaissance Quarterly 3: 451–85. Haar, J. (1986) Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350–1600. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Milway, M. (2000) ‘Forgotten best-sellers from the dawn of the Reformation’, in Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History, ed. R. J. Bast and A. C. Gow. Leiden: 113–42. Pasini, A. (1937) Vita e scritti di Cristoforo Scanello detto ‘il cieco da Forlì’. Forlì. Petrella, G. (2011) ‘“Ad instantia d’Hippolito Ferrarese”: un cantimbanco editore nell’Italia del Cinquecento’, Paratesto 8: 23–79.

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Quondam, A. (1974) Petrarchismo mediato: per una critica della forma antologia. Rome. ––– (1991) Il naso di Laura: lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del Classicismo. Modena. ––– (2005) ‘Note sulla tradizione della poesia spirituale e religiosa (prima parte)’, in Paradigmi e tradizioni, ed. A. Quondam. Rome: 127–211. Richardson, B. (2004a) ‘Inscribed meanings: authorial self-fashioning and readers’ annotations in sixteenth-century Italian printed books’, in Reading and Literacy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. I. Moulton. Turnhout: 85–104. ––– (2004b) ‘“Recitato e cantato”: the oral diffusion of lyric poetry in sixteenthcentury Italy’, in Theatre, Opera, and Performance in Italy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present: Essays in Honour of Richard Andrews, ed. S. Gilson, C. Keen and B. Richardson. Leeds: 67–82. Robin, D. (2016) ‘The lyric voices of Vittoria Colonna and the women of the Giolito anthologies, 1545–1559’, in Companion: 433–66. Rozzo, U. (1993) Linee per una storia dell’editoria religiosa in Italia (1465–1600). Udine. Salzberg, R. (2014) Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice. Manchester. Sherman, W. H. (2008) Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia. Skemer, D. C. (2006) Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. University Park, PA. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Tycz, K. (2018) Material Prayers: The Use of Text in Early Modern Italian Domestic Devotions. Cambridge.

About the author Abigail Brundin is Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge and Director of the British School at Rome. Her extensive writings on Colonna include Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (2008) and the translations Sonnets for Michelangelo (2005) and Selected Letters (2022). Her latest book is The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy (2018).

12. ‘In Competition with and Perhaps More Felicitously Than Petrarch’: The Canonization of Vittoria Colonna in Rinaldo Corso’s Tutte le rime (1558)*1 Humberto González Chávez Abstract This essay examines one of the most important documents in the reception of Colonna’s poetry: the 1558 edition of her complete lyrics with the commentary of Rinaldo Corso. Earlier, partial versions were published in 1542 and 1543, during the author’s lifetime, an honour not previously accorded to a living poet. I argue that the 1558 edition may be taken as a veritable testament of Colonna’s canonization illustrating several facets of this process at work. In particular, through a reading of three key poems and their accompanying commentary, I demonstrate that Corso effectively places Colonna into dialogue with her classical and vernacular predecessors and inscribes her into literary history, including her among a canon of auctores from Homer to Petrarch. Keywords: Vittoria Colonna, Rinaldo Corso, women’s writing, reception, canon

This essay examines what is considered to be one of the most important documents in the history of the reception of Vittoria Colonna’s poetry: the 1558 edition with the commentary of Rinaldo Corso (1525–80?) entitled Tutte le rime della illustriss[ima] et eccellentiss[ima] signora Vittoria Colonna, * I would like to record my gratitude to Virginia Cox for having encouraged me to write on Vittoria Colonna and for having read and commented on earlier versions of this essay. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch12

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Marchesana di Pescara, printed in Venice by the Sessa brothers under the direction of Girolamo Ruscelli.1 The appearance of Corso’s edition constitutes a momentous occasion not only in the history of women’s writing, but also in that of the Italian literary tradition.2 Corso’s commentary has its origins in lectures he delivered in Correggio at the court of Veronica Gambara, who is the dedicatee of the first two editions. Containing Corso’s commentary on the rime spirituali alone, these two editions appeared in 1542 and 1543, during Colonna’s lifetime, an honour not previously accorded to a living author of either sex.3 The only other vernacular author whose lyrics had received extensive commentary was none other than Petrarch. Corso’s commentary performed a literary and cultural function similar to that of contemporary commentaries on Petrarch. His meticulous construction of a canzoniere (songbook) from Colonna’s scattered lyrics, in order to trace an itinerary of conversion from amor terreno (earthly love) in Part 1 to amor celeste (heavenly love) in Part 2, 4 in the complete version of 1558 constitutes an attempt to demonstrate not only the unity of Colonna’s corpus but also the fact that it mirrored the structure of the Petrarchan lyric sequence.5 Such an operation in and of itself acknowledges Colonna’s status as an auctor comparable to Petrarch. This notion is corroborated by an analysis of the commentary. By putting Colonna’s poetry in dialogue with the writings of classical and vernacular authors—from Homer, Virgil and Ovid to Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio—Corso’s edition seeks to inscribe Vittoria Colonna into a poetic genealogy, acknowledging her as a veritable auctor and indeed canonizing her as la quarta corona (the fourth crown).6 In the pages that follow, I will offer a reading of three key poems from the proemial sequence of Part 1 in order to show how the sequencing of the lyrics and the accompanying commentary work together both to define Colonna’s poetics and firmly to establish her place in literary history. 1 Colonna 1558. I have consulted a copy from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (Res/P.o.it. 285 q) available in digital format at , accessed 29 March 2021. Cinquini 1999 is the most comprehensive study of the commentary to date. Other studies include Moro 1990, Bianco 1998a, Bianco 1998b, Brundin 2008: 155–70, Faggioli 2014a, Faggioli 2014b. See also Crivelli 2016: 110–20, Sanson 2016: 223–30 and Sapegno 2016: 142–3. 2 On this point, see Maria Serena Sapegno’s contribution in this volume. 3 See Moro 1990: 196. A lettura by Alessandro Piccolomini on a single sonnet by the Sienese poet Laudomia Forteguerri had appeared in 1541. See Faggioli 2018. 4 Colonna 1558: 233. On this thematic division, see Bianco 1998a: 39 and Cinquini 1999: 678. 5 See Moro 1990: 200–1. 6 On the canonization of Colonna, see Cox 2005a: 14–19; see also Freuler 2016. Patota 2017 suggests that the title of la quarta corona belongs to Bembo.

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Part 1 of Corso’s edition begins with a series of eleven poems I propose we read as a proemial sequence within which poems 1, 10 and 11 are of particular importance.7 The proemial sequence, I argue, functions as an introduction to the collection, presenting as it does Colonna’s meditation on her status as poet and the value of her poetry. Let us begin with a consideration of the proemial sonnet:8 Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia ch’al cor mandar le luci al mondo sole, e non per giunger [luce] al mio bel Sole, al chiaro spirto e a l’onorata spoglia. Giusta cagion a lamentar m’invoglia; ch’io scemi la sua gloria assai mi dole; per altra [lingua] e più sagge parole convien ch’a morte il gran nome si toglia. La pura fe’, l’ardor, l’intensa pena mi scusi appo ciascun; ché ’l grave pianto è tal che tempo né ragion l’affrena. Amaro lacrimar, non dolce canto, foschi sospiri e non voce serena, di stil no ma di duol mi danno vanto.9 I write solely to salve the suffering that those bright eyes, peerless in this world, caused my heart, and not to add lustre to my lovely Sun, to his radiant spirit and honoured remains. A just cause leads me to lament, and it sorely pains me that I may detract from his glory; his great name deserves to be rescued from death by a loftier voice and wiser words. May my pure faith, my ardour, my intense grief excuse me, for my mourning is such that neither reason nor time can restrain it. Bitter weeping, not

7 The poems are A1: 1, S1: 139, A1: 16, A2: 23, A2: 28, A2: 19, A1: 74, A2: 31, A1: 75, A1: 24 and A1: 71, in the numbering introduced in Colonna 1982, which is employed throughout this essay. Cf. Bianco 1998a: 40 and Cinquini 1999: 682. On the manuscript and print traditions and the complex textual problems they present, see Brundin 2016b; Crivelli 2016; Sapegno 2016. 8 On the proemial sonnet, see Cinquini 1999: 687–9, Cox 2005b: 597–601 and Sapegno 2003: 16–18. More generally, see Crivelli 2013, Erspamer 1987, Sapegno 2003, Sapegno 2009, Sapegno 2016. 9 A1: 1. Quotations are taken from Bullock’s edition (Colonna 1982). Variants from Corso’s edition appear between square brackets. Translation and commentary in Cox (ed.) 2013: 134. See also Anna Wainwright’s discussion of this poem in this volume.

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sweet song; dark sighs, not a serene voice: my verse boasts not of style but of woe.

The simplicity of the poem’s content is belied by its artfully wrought form. The austerity of the incipit’s message, for example, contrasts with its artistic rendering, characterized by alliteration evocative of Petrarch’s proemial sonnet which permeates the entire first quatrain. The line that follows introduces a metaphor for the beloved’s eyes (‘luci’), which is subsequently amplified and transformed into a second metaphor for her beloved, the sun (‘sole’). Colonna deploys phonetic and metric identity to express semantic difference while manipulating two metaphors referring to the beloved, as becomes explicit in the fourth line. The second quatrain adds another dimension to Colonna’s suffering (‘doglia’); it is caused not only by her beloved’s death—already implicit in ‘spoglia’ (remains) and stated boldly in the last line of the octave with ‘morte’ (death)—but also by her concern that her writing might diminish his glory. The reference to glory here functions as a gloss on the light of the sun in the opening quatrain thus unifying the octave. Colonna’s assertion that it would be more fitting for another poet to undertake the task of immortalizing her beloved must be understood as adhering to the rhetorical conventions of the exordium, the requisite captatio benevolentiae.10 Colonna’s display of her ‘mastery of rhetorical ornament’11 continues in the sestet of the sonnet. The asyndeton in the first line introduces an excusatio (‘May my pure faith, my ardour, my intense grief excuse me before everyone’),12 another example of Colonna’s observance of exordial conventions. In the final tercet, the dichotomies of its content are rendered in terms of form through the binary structure of its lines, underscored by the strong caesurae in lines 12 and 14 and the triple repetition of ‘non/no’, a refashioning of the anaphora in the opening of Inferno 13.13 The antithesis Colonna sets up between her writing versus poetry in the concluding tercet is belied by its form: the chiasmus and elision in line 13 have a unifying effect, suggesting the possibility that Colonna’s ‘dark sighs’ ( foschi sospiri) might transform into ‘serene voice’ (voce serena) and perhaps even ‘sweet song’ (dolce canto), in a refashioning of Petrarch’s conceit of ‘sighs’ (sospiri) 10 See Cox 2005b: 598–9. Cf. Cox 2006. 11 Cox (ed.) 2013: 134. 12 ‘La pura fe’, l’ardor, l’intensa pena / mi scusi appo ciascun’. 13 Cf. Inf. 13.4–6: ‘Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco, / non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti, / non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco’ (Not green leaves, but dark in color, not smooth branches, but knotted and twisted, no fruit was there, but thorns with poison). Alighieri 1996: I.198–9.

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that sound forth as ‘scattered rhymes’ (rime sparse).14 Colonna can thus be seen to be negotiating her relationship to Dante and Petrarch through subtle stylistic imitation. From the first poem, indeed from the first word, Colonna establishes herself as auctor in terms of form even if the content appears to do otherwise. This is underscored by Colonna’s choice of verb which, though apparently deployed simply to express the act of writing, is in fact highly allusive. ‘I write’ (Scrivo) appears four times both in Dante’s Commedia, in contexts in which the poet affirms his truth-claims for his poem, and in Petrarch’s Fragmenta, where it expresses the authenticity of the poet’s words and their evanescence.15 The intertextual resonance of the opening verb, then, inaugurates Colonna’s dialogue with the tradition—a dialogue which, as we have seen, takes place also through style—and thereby begins to enact the process of her inscription into literary history. Let us now consider the accompanying commentary. Corso’s introductory remarks demonstrate his understanding of the poetics of Part 1 as a poetics of mourning: Truly deepest above all others is that suffering which proceeds from Love, as from a most powerful cause. But much greater of all these without a doubt is that which proceeds from the death of the beloved … Loving, therefore, her husband as much as herself, as she demonstrates, we must believe that our Lady Marchioness felt incalculable pain at his death and that thereafter she resolved to write.16

Corso’s commentary draws out the love thematic, which remains rather subdued in the poem. Moreover, he brings in a historical dimension by noting that the poet is mourning the death of her husband. Corso’s remarks are not to be taken lightly, for they remind us that we are dealing with conjugal

14 Quotations from the Fragmenta are taken from Santagata’s edition (Petrarca 2004). 15 See Inf. 15.88, 34.23; Par. 5.85, 24.25; RVF 105.88, 151.14, 212.4, 259.12. On Dantean influences in Colonna, see Sapegno 2018: 136–8. 16 ‘Profondissima veramente sopra tutte l’altre è quella doglia, che da Amore, sì come da potentissima cagione, procede. Ma molto di tutte queste maggiore senza dubbio è quella, che dalla morte dell’amata persona procede … Amando per tanto la Signora Marches[ana] nostra, sì come ella dimostra, il suo sposo, a pare di se medesima, dobbiamo credere, che della morte sua dolore inestimabile sentisse, & appresso, che a scriver s’inducesse’. Colonna 1558: 2. I have standardized ‘v’ in transcriptions from Corso (rather than rendering it as ‘u’ outside initial position), but I have not otherwise modernized his language.

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verse, and more precisely with poesia vedovile (widowhood poetry), new strands of Petrarchism that Colonna initiated.17 The commentary proceeds by paraphrasing and elucidating the meaning of the sonnet and in so doing engages with matters of intertextuality, one of its primary concerns. Endorsing Colonna’s assertion in the incipit that she writes as a means to give vent to her pain, he cites the authority of Petrarch: ‘For (as Petrarch wrote) sighs cease with speaking and pain is assuaged by singing’.18 He thus places Colonna’s sonnet in dialogue with two important Petrarchan canzoni in whose propositions the idea of the cathartic power of poetry is set forth. This is at the core of Colonna’s poetics so that she might be seen to be taking up a Petrarchan project. To these he adds quotations from two sonnets from Part 2. Glossing line 5, he writes, ‘But a just cause compels her to lament his death, not to sing his praises, in the manner of Petrarch, “Certainly, a just pain leads me to lament”’.19 The formula ‘in the manner of Petrarch’ succinctly expresses the idea that Colonna is imitating her predecessor, a notion attenuated as his remarks continue: ‘‘Nevertheless, she cannot be silent, as one who seeks not to gain fame for herself or for him, but only to give vent to the pain conceived on account of his death. Petrarch wrote in a similar way in the sonnet “If I had thought that so dear”’.20 The formula used here, ‘he wrote in a similar way’, suggests less imitation than the elaboration of similar ideas. As he explicates Colonna, remarking also on her style and lexicon, Corso does not limit himself to quoting Petrarch. He draws from a wide range of biblical, classical and vernacular texts: in the proemial sequence alone, he also quotes Deuteronomy, the Pauline epistles, Homer, Theocritus, Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Guittone d’Arezzo, Dante, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Bembo and Colonna herself. Glossing line 8 of the sonnet, for example, he paraphrases a passage from Cicero’s De legibus (‘As Cicero writes, “No labourer can with his toil give so long a life to a plant sown in the earth as that which the poet can bestow with his verse”’)21—which he pairs with 17 See respectively the essays by Shannon McHugh and Anna Wainwright in this volume. 18 ‘Perciò che (come il Petr[arca] disse) i sospiri parlando han tregua & cantando la doglia si disacerba’. Colonna 1558: 1–2. Cf. RVF 127.11, 23.4. 19 ‘Ma giusta cagione a lamentarsi della sua morte, non a cantar delle sue lodi la invoglia, a guisa del Petrarc[a] Giusto duol certo a lamentar mi mena (RVF 276.5)’. Colonna 1558: 3. 20 ‘[T]uttavia non può tacere, sì come quella, che cerca non d’acquistar gloria a se stessa, overo a lui; ma solo di sfogare la doglia per la sua morte conceputa. Il Petr[arca] similemente disse nel Son[etto] S’io havessi pensato, che sì care’. Colonna 1558: 3. Cf. RVF 293.1. 21 ‘[S]ì come Cicerone scrive. Niun lavoratore può con la fatica sua dar sì lunga vita ad alcuna Pianta nel terreno seminata, quanto il poeta fa col suo verso’. Colonna 1558: 3. Cf. Leg. 1.1.

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two references to Colonna’s own poetry: ‘Which she herself demonstrates clearly in the sonnet “The lofty virtues of Aeneas” and in that which she wrote for Monsignor Bembo, “Alas, how adverse Fate was to my Sun”’.22 In the first instance, by quoting Cicero, Corso reveals the classical pedigree of Colonna’s verse. At the same time, the inclusion of quotations from Colonna’s own poetry suggests that she may be seen ‘as a model of imitation by other writers alongside the vernacular greats’.23 More important, however, is the reference to Bembo, for it points to her correspondence in verse with the leading authority on Petrarchan imitation whose inclusion of the sonnet in the second edition of his lyrics authorized Colonna’s own poetry.24 To explain the meaning of ‘ardour’ (ardore) in line 9, he quotes Virgil’s Eclogues along with a quotation from another of her poems: ‘Ardour, the immense love, whence Virgil wrote, “The shepherd Corydon burnt for the beautiful Alexis”, that is, loved ardently. And it is fitting for whatever be loved or desired too much. Whence we have in the sonnet “That lofty ensign and that boldness / your invincible valour, more than human, spent the ardour of the once mad desire”’.25 In quoting classical and vernacular auctores to elucidate Colonna, his commentary reveals her erudition. By including her own poetry alongside these canonical texts, more significantly, Corso indeed suggests that Colonna is an auctor in her own right.26 This idea emerges with particular force in his exegesis of the third poem,27 which contains a passage positing an agonistic relationship between poets. Glossing Colonna’s ‘The sun never ushered a brighter day’ (Più chiaro giorno il sole non aperse, line 9), he writes, ‘In competition with and perhaps more felicitously than Petrarch, “The sun never ushered a more beauteous day”’.28 Corso thereby demonstrates that Colonna is not merely an imitator; she is capable of transforming and even surpassing her models. 22 ‘La qual cosa ella stessa dimostra chiaro nel Son[netto] L’alte virtù d’Enea. Et in q[ue]llo che à Mons[ignor] Be[m]bo scrive. Ahi quanto fu al mio Sol, contrario il Fato’. Colonna 1558: 3–4. The poems referenced are A1: 24 and A1: 71. 23 As Brundin notes regarding quotations of Gambara (Brundin 2008: 160). 24 Cox 2008: 60. See also Vecce 1993, Dionisotti 2002, and Brundin 2001. 25 ‘L’ardore; lo smisurato amore. onde Verg[ilio] disse. Formosum Pastor Corydon ardebat Alexim (Ecl. 2.1). Cioè amava ardentemente. Et conviensi a qualunque cosa che troppo s’ami; & appetisca. Onde habbiamo nel So[netto] Quella superba insegna, e quell’ardire. Spense l’ardor del già folle desire [/] L’invitto tuo valor via più ch’umano’. Colonna 1558: 5. The poem quoted is A1: 5. 26 As Bianco notes regarding a quotation of Trifone Gabriele (Bianco 1998b: 294). 27 A1: 16. 28 ‘À concorrenza e forse più felicemente, che il Petr[arca]. Il Sol mai più bel giorno non aperse’. Colonna 1558: 15.

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The climax of the proemial sequence occurs in a diptych of poems in which Colonna compares herself to emblematic figures of classical and vernacular poetry. In the tenth sonnet in the sequence, ‘[L’alte virtù] d’Enea superbe e sole’ (The lofty virtues of Aeneas, supreme and peerless), we have an explicit comparison between poets and their heroes, Virgil and Aeneas versus Colonna and her husband, Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos: [L’alte virtù] d’Enea superbe e sole fa[n] risonar quel chiaro [almo] intelletto, ma, se ’l Ciel dava al [canto] equal subietto, [propria] luce a [quest’occhi] era ’l mio Sole. Questo lume che ’l mondo onora e cole dava cagion d’alzar suo grande effetto, né tal splendor or cape in minor petto, onde ciascun de la sua età si dole. Non già che la materia il nome eterno toglia a [sì] degno auttor, né a [tali] effetti merto e ragion non faccian chiara istoria; ma condur questo in Ciel, non ne l’Inferno, lodar vera virtù, [non] saggi detti, farian più [chiara] e l’una e l’altra gloria.29 The lofty virtues of Aeneas, supreme and peerless, make that illustrious and noble mind resound, but if the heavens had given his song an equal subject, my Sun would have been true light to his eyes. This light that the world honours and reveres would have given him reason to exalt his great work, nor can such splendour be comprehended by a lesser intellect, wherefore each laments his fated age. Not that the subject deprives so worthy an author of eternal fame, nor that merit and reason do not accord an illustrious history to such deeds; but to lead this one to Heaven and not to Hell, to praise true virtue and not just wise words would add lustre to the glory of both.

The theme of the immortalizing power of poetry returns in the opening lines of this poem with the declaration that the virtues of Aeneas and Virgil’s intellect still resound in the Aeneid. Yet, Colonna claims, if the heavens had granted Virgil a subject worthy of his song, d’Avalos, not Aeneas, would have been his hero. Lest her bold contention be seen to denigrate the author and 29 A1: 24. See Cox 2006: 137.

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his hero, Colonna affirms that Virgil’s subject does not diminish his enduring fame and that Aeneas’s deeds were not unworthy of a great author. In spite of these statements, she concludes by setting up an opposition between d’Avalos and Aeneas in the final tercet: an ascent to heaven versus a descent to hell, true virtue versus wise words. The contraposition of Aeneas and d’Avalos necessarily implies a confrontation between Colonna and Virgil.30 In spite of the reticent posturing, Colonna appears to be subjecting Virgil to a dialectical treatment similar to that which we find in Dante’s Commedia, simultaneously a tribute to her great predecessor and a desire to succeed him. The poem’s final statement is that had Virgil sung of d’Avalos, the glory of both would have been greater. If singing of d’Avalos would have increased Virgil’s renown, Colonna is implying it will increase hers, and perhaps her fame might even rival that of Virgil.31 Corso’s commentary obliquely favours this interpretation. Glossing the opening lines, Corso asserts that Aeneas furnished Virgil with a subject and thereby enabled his immortal fame: ‘The virtues of Aeneas, lofty and supreme make resound, that is have given a subject to sing to the mind of Virgil of Mantua, illustrious and noble, that is, divine, who nurtures the immortal fame of the former’.32 Paraphrasing the next two lines, Corso maintains that d’Avalos was worthy of a great poet on account of his unrivalled valour: ‘That is, my husband merited that so great a poet should fix his eyes on his valour and, having set aside that of all others, sing only of him, on account of the fact that the valour of the Marquis and the style of Virgil by far surpass those of all others’.33 Had Virgil taken up d’Avalos as his subject, he continues, the glory of both would be greater, for it is a greater achievement to reach heaven: ‘The fame of her Sun and that of Virgil itself would be all the more vital and illustrious inasmuch as it is a greater labour to lead one to heaven … than to hell’.34 As Corso himself admits, Colonna is up to the task ‘as we have seen in some places and shall see in many others’.35 Corso’s commentary, then, suggests that Colonna has surpassed Virgil and his Aeneid, as Dante 30 See Sapegno 2003: 30. 31 See Cox 2016a. 32 ‘Le virtù pertanto d’Enea alte, & superbe fan risonare, cioè hanno dato materia di cantare all’intelletto di Verg[ilio] Mantovano chiaro, & Almo, cioè divino, & che la Fama di colui nodrisce immortale’. Colonna 1558: 39. 33 ‘[C]ioè era degno il mio sposo, che tanto Poeta nel suo valore affissasse gli occhi, & posposto ogn’altro di lui solo ca[n]tasse, per ava[n]zare di gran lunga il valor del March[ese] & lo stil di Verg[ilio] quel di ciascuno altro’. Colonna 1558: 36. 34 ‘[L]a Fama del suo Sole, & quella di Verg[ilio] stessa sarebbe tanto piu viva, & chiara, quanto è maggior fatica condurre uno al cielo … che allo inferno’. Colonna 1558: 36–7. 35 ‘[C]ome in alcun luogo habbiamo veduto, & in molti vedremo’. Colonna 1558: 36.

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had claimed with respect to the Commedia and Petrarch with his epic ambitions for the Fragmenta. Chief among the intertextual resonances Corso perceives in Colonna’s poem, in fact, is that with Petrarch’s (‘Se Virgilio et Omero avessin visto’ (If Virgil and Homer had seen (RVF 186)). Like Dante and Petrarch before her, Colonna is here negotiating her relationship with the classical past. Colonna’s dialogue with poetic forbears continues with the second sonnet of the diptych—‘Ahi quanto fu al mio Sol contrario il fato!’ (Alas, how cruel fate was to my Sun)—in which she addresses the vernacular tradition in the figure of Bembo: Ahi quanto fu al mio Sol contrario il fato! Ché con l’alta virtù de’ raggi suoi pria non v’accese, che mill’anni e poi voi sareste più chiaro, [ei] più lodato? Il nome suo con lo stil vostro ornato che [fa] scorno agli antichi, invidia a noi, a malgrado del tempo avreste voi dal secondo morir sempre guardato. Potess’io almen mandar nel vostro petto l’ardor ch’io sento, o voi nel mio l’ingegno per far la rima a quel gran merto eguale; ché così temo il Ciel [non] prenda a sdegno voi, perch’avete preso altro subietto, me, ch’ardisco parlar d’un lume tale.36 Alas, how cruel fate was to my Sun, that with the great power of his rays he did not strike you earlier so that in a thousand years and more you would be more famous, he more praised. Adorned with your style, which leaves the ancients in its wake and fills us with envy, his name would have been preserved by you from the second death, in defiance of time. If only I could at least send into your breast the ardour I feel, or you into mine the genius that would let me make verse equal to his great merit! As it is, I fear heaven will be angered with us—with you because you have chosen another subject, with me because I dare to speak of so great a light.

As we have already noted, this poem is of great significance, for it attests to Colonna’s correspondence with a figure of utmost authority and, by 36 A1: 71. The translation is taken from Cox (ed.) 2013: 268–9.

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virtue of its inclusion in the second edition of Bembo’s lyrics, it symbolically elevated her to an equal status.37 The juxtaposition of this and the previous sonnet is clearly intended to place the two poems in dialogue in yet another iteration of the age-old debate on the relationship between antiquity and modernity, emblematized by Virgil and Bembo. Yet what is ultimately at stake, I would argue, is Colonna’s place in the canon. The sonnet’s argument, analogous to that of the preceding poem, is synthesized in the last line of the first quatrain: if Bembo had sung of d’Avalos, the former would be more famous, the latter more praised. The parallel between Colonna and Virgil in the previous poem is drawn here between Colonna and Bembo. Colonna exploits the properties of the sonnet form to structure her argument. The octave may be understood as a contrary-to-fact conditional statement. The first half of the opening quatrain presents the actual situation in the form of a lamentation while in the second Colonna states the first of two hypothetical consequences—greater fame for Bembo, greater praise for d’Avalos. She then gives the second consequence in the following quatrain with a restatement of the theme of the power of poetry against the ravages of time: Bembo’s verse would have prevented d’Avalos from suffering a second death by preserving his name from oblivion. In doing so, moreover, Colonna praises Bembo’s style which she claims rivals that of both ancients and moderns. The sestet renders explicit the Colonna-Bembo parallel at the core of the poem, though Colonna slightly attenuates its implications by deploying the optative mood. In the first tercet she expresses a desire for an impossible communion with Bembo: she wishes she could enkindle in him her ardent love or receive within her his genius in order to create the possibility of a poetry capable of equating res (signified) and signum (signifier). The formal properties of these lines, however, belie their tentative tone. The apparently neat distribution of first- and second-person signifiers—the ‘io’ (I) of the poet and the reverent ‘voi’ (you) with which she addresses her interlocutor—in the first and the second hemistich respectively affirms their difference and yet suggests a possible equivalence. If we look more closely, however, we may perceive a more complex formal play. The impossible interpenetration their content expresses is rendered possible by their form: references to Colonna enclose that to Bembo in the first half of the tercet ‘I … your … I’ (‘io … vostro … io’), while in the second half the references to Bembo enclose the reference to Colonna ‘you … my … the genius’ (‘voi … mio … l’ingegno’). Moreover, if we consider the fact that 37 See Crivelli 2016: 69. On the significance of this sonnet within Colonna’s eighteenth-century reception, see Tatiana Crivelli’s essay in this volume.

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the syntax and the number of references privilege Colonna, we can see that the balance tips towards her. This interpretation is borne out by the final tercet, where Colonna expresses her fear of divine disdain both for Bembo, who chose another subject, and for herself on account of her daring to speak of d’Avalos. The placement of the pronouns within the line brings them into relief while their placement within the tercet expressively renders the idea of poetic succession: Bembo (‘voi’) is superseded by Colonna (‘me’). The verbal tense employed supports this interpretation: Bembo and his poetry are relegated to the past ‘you have chosen’ (‘avete preso’) while Colonna and hers are located in the present ‘I dare’ (‘ardisco’). The present tense in the latter case is highly significant, conveying as it does Colonna’s acceptance of her poetic vocation even as she admits the audacity of the enterprise. This statement renders the poem an ideal conclusion to the proemial sequence. Let us now consider Corso’s commentary and his handling of the meaning generated by the order he has assigned to these two poems. Not surprisingly, we find him immediately at pains to control and diminish the implications of the diptych with respect to Colonna. He argues that the comparison is rather between Bembo and Virgil: ‘In the present sonnet, our lady Vittoria compares the style of Monsignor Bembo to Virgil’s muse’.38 There is, to be sure, an implicit comparison between Bembo and Virgil, but the poem’s focus is on the relationship between Bembo and Colonna. As we read on, we come to understand that Corso finds even a comparison between Virgil and Bembo to be exceedingly bold. In light of the previous poem, Bembo in effect would appear to rival Virgil, a notion underscored by Colonna’s praise of Bembo’s style which puts the ancients to shame and provokes the envy of his contemporaries. Corso thus finds himself in the position of having to counteract the meaning that the poem and its placement might suggest: And so that you might not believe that the Marchioness’s writing, ‘which puts the ancients to shame’, means also Homer and Virgil, who were ancients, you must know a rule of both canon and civil law according to which in every discussion, however general, the authority of God and of the prince are understood to be excluded, as in civil law that of the emperor and in canon law that of the pope. Homer and Virgil, therefore, holding the highest place among poets, are understood to be excluded

38 ‘Nel presente Son[etto] la Sig[nora] V[ittoria] N[ostra] paragona lo stile di Monsig[nor] Bembo alla Musa di Verg[ilio]’. Colonna 1558: 38.

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from this universal argument. And it should not be taken lightly if she compares him to Virgil.39

Appealing to analogies with canon and civil law, Corso explains that Homer and Virgil as the greatest of poets are to be excluded from Colonna’s reference to the ancients. At the same time, he is forced to concede that a comparison results when the two poems are read in sequence. He attempts to resolve the contradiction by remarking that it ought not to be taken lightly that Colonna compares Bembo to Virgil. Corso, however, does not comment on what this implies for Colonna. In both sonnets, the comparisons involve Colonna and her predecessors. Considering the two sonnets as a diptych, we can see that by comparing herself to two key authors—one classical and one vernacular, one ancient and one modern—Colonna in effect elevates herself to their status. To correct and amplify Corso’s phrase, it should not be taken lightly if Colonna compares herself to Virgil and to Bembo. Corso’s final remarks concern intertextuality: ‘To this sonnet Monsignor Bembo responds with that which begins, “Crown her temples with the beloved”’.40 We have already noted the implications of Colonna’s correspondence with Bembo. Corso’s quotation of the incipit of Bembo’s response, however, allows us to take our interpretation further. The octave of Bembo’s sonnet is taken up with an exhortation to Apollo to bestow upon Colonna the laurel wreath of poets. 41 The inclusion of this quotation here, then, may be taken as signifying Colonna’s admission to the Parnassus of the Italian poetic tradition. 42 I have been arguing for the importance of this edition in the history of Colonna’s reception. Indeed, I am suggesting that it is a veritable testament of her canonization. 43 In receiving extensive commentary on her poetry, Colonna becomes part of a tradition that includes the classics and the Bible as well as the vernacular poetry of such authors as Dante and Petrarch—not 39 ‘Et accioché non crediate che la March[esana] dicendo, Che fa scorno a gli antichi; intenda ancora d’Omero & di Vergilio, li quali furono antichi, dovete sapere una regola delle leggi parimenti canoniche & civili che in ogni parlare, quantunque generalissimamente, s’intende esclusa l’autorità di Dio, & del Prencipe; Come nelle leggi civili, dell’Imperadore, nelle canoniche, del Papa. Omero adunque, & Verg[ilio] tene[n]do fra gli Poeti il primo luogo, da questo uniuersale ragionamento ben s’intendono esclusi. Et non dee parer poco, s’ella a Verg[ilio] lo paragona’. Colonna 1558: 39. 40 ‘A questo Son[etto] Mons[ignor] Bembo risponde con quel, che incomincia Cingi le costei tempie de l’amato’. Colonna 1558: 40. 41 For the text with translation and commentary, see Cox 2013: 268–70. 42 For a similar interpretation, see Cox 2013: 269. 43 See Faggioli 2018: 20.

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even Bembo, the theorist and leading practitioner of Petrarchan imitation, had been deemed worthy of such an honour. Her unimpeachable technical and stylistic mastery,44 her groundbreaking contributions as the founder of the spiritual, 45 conjugal and vedovile (widowhood) strains of Petrarchism, and the fact of her sex,46 ensured her attainment of canonical status during her lifetime. As I have demonstrated, the 1558 edition illustrates several facets of the canonization process at work: the attempt to collect and publish her entire corpus as a cohesive whole, the effort to trace her poetic itinerary by placing the poems into a significant order and structure modelled on the Petrarchan lyric sequence, the recognition of the formal and conceptual complexity of her poetry requiring erudite commentary and detailed study, the acknowledgment of her place in the poetic genealogy implicit in her dialogue with the texts of her classical and vernacular predecessors and her inscription into literary history by virtue of her inclusion among the canon of auctores from Homer to Petrarch. 47

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion GSLI

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Giornale storico della letteratura italiana

Primary works Alighieri, D. (1996–2011). The Divine Comedy, tr. R.M. Durling, ed. R.M. Durling and R.L. Martinez. New York. Colonna, V. (1558) Tutte le rime … con l’espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso. Venice. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. Petrarca, F. (2004). Canzoniere, ed. M. Santagata. Milan.

44 See Cox 2005a: 15. 45 Cox 2008: 71–2 and nos. 146–7, 150. 46 See Brundin 2008: 156. On the gender dynamics at play in Colonna’s rime amorose, see McHugh 2013. 47 The ‘classicization’ of Colonna, both with respect to classical and vernacular auctores, reflects the same process at work in the canonization of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso identified and studied by Javitch 1991.

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Secondary works Bianco, M. (1998a) ‘Rinaldo Corso e il “canzoniere” di Vittoria Colonna’, Italique 1: 36–45. ––– (1998b) ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi di filologia italiana 56: 271–95. Brundin, A. (2001) ‘Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary’, The Modern Language Review 96.1: 61–81. ––– (2008) Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. Aldershot. ––– (2016b) ‘Vittoria Colonna in manuscript’, in Companion: 39–68. Cinquini, C. (1999) ‘Rinaldo Corso editore e commentatore delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Aevum 73: 669–96. Cox, V. (2005a) ‘Women writers and the canon in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. P. J. Benson and V. Kirkham. Ann Arbor: 14–31. ––– (2005b) ‘Sixteenth-Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy of Laura’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 / 3: 583–606. ––– (2006) ‘Attraverso lo specchio: le petrarchiste del Cinquecento e l’eredità di Laura’, in Petrarca: Canoni, esemplarità, ed. V. Finucci. Rome: 117–49. ––– (2008) Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Crivelli, T. (2013) ‘“Mentre al principio il fin non corrisponde”: note sul canzoniere di Vittoria Colonna’, in Marco Praloran 1955–2011: Studi offerti dai colleghi delle università svizzere, ed. S. Calligaro, A. Di Dio, and S. Albonico. Pisa: 117–36. ––– (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. Dionisotti, C. (2002) Scritti sul Bembo, ed. C. Vela. Turin: 115–40. Erspamer, F. (1987) ‘Il canzoniere rinascimentale come testo o come macrotesto: il sonetto proemiale’, Schifanoia 4: 109–14. Faggioli, S. (2014a) ‘Di un’edizione del 1542 della “Dichiaratione” di Rinaldo Corso alle rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna’, GSLI 191: 200–10. ––– (2014b) A Sixteenth-Century Reader and Critic of Vittoria Colonna: Rinaldo Corso’s Commentary on her Spiritual Rime. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. ––– (2018) ‘The first commentaries on women poets: Alessandro Piccolomini and Rinaldo Corso critique Laudomia Forteguerri and Vittoria Colonna’, in Women and the Canon, ed. M. Arriaga Florez and S. Santuosso. Seville: 19–32. Freuler, G. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna: the pictorial evidence’, in Companion: 237–69.

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Javitch, D. (1991) Proclaiming a Classic. The Canonization of the Orlando Furioso. Princeton. McHugh, S. (2013) ‘Rethinking Vittoria Colonna: gender and desire in the rime amorose’, The Italianist 33/3: 345–60. Moro, G. (1990) ‘Le commentaire de Rinaldo Corso sur les “Rime” de Vittoria Colonna: une encyclopédie pour les “très nobles Dames”’, in Les commentaires et la naissance de la critique littéraire France / Italie (XIVe-XVIe siècles): Actes du Colloque international sur le commentaire (Paris, 19–21 mai 1988), ed. G. MathieuCastellani and M. Plaisance. Paris: 195–202. Patota, G. (2017) La quarta corona. Bologna. Sanson, H. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and language’ in Companion: 195–233. Sapegno, M. S. (2003) ‘La costruzione di un Io lirico al femminile nella poesia di Vittoria Colonna’, Versants 46: 15–48. ––– (2009) ‘L’itinerario poetico di Vittoria Colonna’, in Scrivere il volgare fra Medioevo e Rinascimento: atti del Convegno di Studi, Siena, 14–15 maggio 2008, ed. N. Cannata and M. A. Grignani. Pisa: 161–72. ––– (2016) ‘The Rime: a textual conundrum?’, in Companion: 140–94. ––– (2018) ‘Oltre Petrarca: Vittoria Colonna da Boccaccio a Dante’, Critica del testo, 21/1: 131–9. Vecce, C. (1993) ‘Il codice epistolare della poesia femminile’, Critica letteraria 78: 3–34.

About the author Humberto González Chávez (PhD, New York University, 2020) is Lecturer of Italian at Coastal Carolina University. He specializes in late medieval Italian literature, especially Dante and Petrarch. He has held faculty appointments at the Ohio State University, the University of North Texas, Baylor University, and High Point University.

13. Colonna and Petrarch in the Rime of Lucia Colao* Andrea Torre

Abstract The lyric production of the Friulian writer Lucia Colao (b. 1578), which survives in two manuscripts, represents a rare female contribution to the tradition of religious rewritings of Petrarch, which began in the 1530s with Girolamo Malipiero’s Petrarca spirituale. Colao recasts in a spiritual form 121 Petrarchan lyrics, all from the first part of the RVF. This chapter analyzes the complexities of the relationship between hypotext and hypertext in Colao’s reworkings, and the dialectic between conservation, substitution and resemantization of the lexis and content of the originals. It also considers how Colao’s texts construct a feminine subject within lyric discourse, in a manner that reflects the lessons of Vittoria Colonna’s earlier creative appropriation of Petrarch in her spiritual lyrics. Keywords: literary adaptations and appropriations, religious poetry, devotional literature, lyric poetry books, manuscript and printing

A little-known episode in the history of the sixteenth-century reception of the Italian classics concerns their religious ‘conversion’, a curious case of productive reception (to use the terminology of Klaus W. Hempfer), which involves works both by authors canonized within the critical debate of the period (Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso), and by authors legitimized through their immense publishing success (Ariosto).1 This process of spiritual rewriting can be as minimal as repurposed citation, or it can extend as far as a complete transfer of structure, concepts and forms from one cultural code to another.2 * Translated by Virginia Cox. 1 Hempfer 2004. 2 On religious rewritings of literature in the Cinquecento, see Graf 1888: 76–86; Schick 1983; Quondam 1991: 203–62; Föcking 1994; Ussia 1999; Cherchi 2004: 183–93; Forni 2009b; Quondam

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch13

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The reception of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta offers a precocious and highly articulated example of this phenomenon, spanning both the ideologically inflected theorizing and formal codification we see in Girolamo Malipiero’s Petrarcha spirituale (1536), and the militant rewriting of Giovan Giacomo Salvatorino’s Thesoro di sacra scrittura sopra le rime di Petrarcha (1539), as well as the ventriloquized, female-voiced fragmenta we find in the Risposte di m[adonna] Laura a m[esser] Francesco Petrarcha, attributed to Stefano Colonna (1552). Within this general context, I intend to concentrate my attention on the lyric production of the Friulian writer Lucia Colao, who, in my view, gives interesting evidence of the persistence of Vittoria Colonna’s fortunes within the post-Tridentine period, as well as attesting to the role that Colonna’s religious lyrics had assumed as a legitimizing stylistic and thematic model for female poets. We have very few biographical details for Colao. She was probably born in the 1570s, to a family of furriers, who had attained a high social standing through the exercise of their profession, comparable to that of the provincial nobility in terms of wealth, education and public prestige.3 This family status enabled Lucia to obtain a literary education, perhaps at the hands of instructors from local monasteries or convents; and it ensured that she mixed with the most prominent noble families of Oderzo, such as the Melchiori and, above all, the Amalteo. It is to this latter family that we owe the conservation of surviving traces of Colao’s poetic activity; and they seem to have been responsible, also, for disseminating her work, which circulated privately, in manuscript, within the intellectual community of the Veneto in this period. For example, we can point to a sonnet by Orsatto Giustinian (inserted within a sequence that also includes compositions addressed to Lucrezia Marinella and Maddalena Campiglia), in which the figure of Colao is compared with that of Sappho, in a triumphal comparison between pagan lyric, concerned with themes ‘vain and lascivious’ (lascivo e vano), and religious poetry, whose role is to purge ‘every unwholesome affect’ (ogni affetto insano). 4 Encomiastic texts like Giustinian’s sonnet reflect the post-Tridentine climate in Italy, in which women writers’ presence within the literary community was facilitated by the moralizing constraints on literature imposed by the ecclesiastical authorities. This censorship had the effect of restricting the thematic range of literary inventio in such a way as to make literature compatible with the social decorum required of

2005: 213–82; Luzzi 2013: 321–39; Torre 2010; Torre 2013–14; Torre 2019. 3 Savorgnan di Brazzà 2011: 17–19. 4 Giustinian 1998: 148.

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women. Women’s literary activity expanded, and it won recognition from their male peers.5 The one fragment of biographical information that we can find within Colao’s lyric corpus, which for the most part moves on a spiritual plane far removed from all historical contingencies, is an allusion to a debt of gratitude incurred with the ‘holy and illustrious Comenduno’ (sacro illustre Comenduno) we find celebrated in her rewriting of Petrarch’s sonnet 233. The reference may be to the Venetian cardinal Giovanni Francesco Comendone, a prominent figure within papal diplomacy in the second half of the sixteenth century. The Petrarchan hypotext centres on the motif of a vulnus that passes from Laura to the lyric ‘I’ by means of a spiritual transmission via the channel of sight (lines. 9–11: ‘From my lady’s right eye—rather her right sun—to my right eye came the illness that delights me and does not pain me’).6 Colao’s re-elaboration of the poem expresses the beneficial effects the cleric it addresses has had on her spiritual wellbeing. Beyond the technical ability that Colao shows in revolutionizing the text of the original while conserving intact the connecting thread of the rhyme-words, her skill in rewriting is also evident in the way in which she succeeds in grasping the conceptual core of the hypotext and transforming it to fit with the narration of her own personal lyric story. This is characteristic of Colao’s poetic practice generally in the sequence, and it reveals her extreme authorial awareness. If the physical ‘pain’ that is disturbing the ‘right eye’ of Laura conveys itself contagiously to the poet’s ‘right eye’, transforming itself into ‘the illness that delights me and does not pain me’ (in other words, into an inner suffering that strikes the lyric ‘I’ at the sight of the beloved), the darkness that Colao alludes to in her first quatrain (‘if the rays of Phoebus can sweep away the sable mantle / of the night and chase off the dark air’) seems to be essentially moral.7 (Though we cannot exclude that it may be the symbolic correlative of Colao’s presumed physical blindness, recollected by Orsatto Giustinian in his sonnet in her praise, ‘Cieca al Sol, da cui luce il mondo prende’). The passage from concrete to abstract, which in Petrarch’s Fragmenta accompanies the contagion of the vulnus from Laura to Petrarch, thus unites in the single person of Colao, who is a woman who suffers (‘Fortune has made my life hard’) both physically and spiritually (so that she combines the roles of Laura and the 5 Cox 2011: 27. 6 ‘che dal destr’occhio, anzi dal destro sole, / de la mia donna al mio destr’occhio venne / il mal che mi diletta, e non mi dole’. All citations from the Canzoniere are from Petrarca 2011. 7 ‘se sgombran della notte il manto oscuro / di Febo i raggi, e scaccian l’aer bruno’. The text is cited here from the printed edition in Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.9.

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Petrarch-persona); and, at the same time, a writer who searches for moral redemption within spiritual poetry, in the manner of the illustrious male archetype of Petrarch as author.8 The figure of Comendone may perhaps be seen as representing, from this perspective, the ideal correction of the miraculous, but contagious, ‘Sun’ of the Petrarchan beloved. He presents himself, instead, as the true copy on earth of the divine ‘supreme Sun’, a flesh-and-blood imitatio Christi (cfr. line 9), capable of dispelling the ‘sable mantle’ and chasing away the ‘dark air’ from the clouded inner eyes of Colao’s poet. In order to find a citation of Colao’s name, after the sonnet of Giustinian’s, mentioned earlier, we need to have recourse to the erudite repertories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Under the biographical entry for Girolamo Malipiero in his Notizie Istorico-critiche intorno la Vita e le Opere degli scrittori viniziani, Giovanni degli Agostini records that ‘Lucia Colao, a citizen of Uderzo, also converted Petrarch into rime spirituali, and the manuscript of her work may be found in the collection of the noble Signori Amaltei in that same ancient city’.9 Soon after this, the ‘kindness of the Most Illustrious Signor Orazio Amalteo of Uderzo’ was credited with having transmitted to Luisa Bergalli the autograph manuscript of an anonymous female author, ‘which is a paraphrase of Petrarch’s Rime, converted to sacred subject-matter, and, as will appear at once from the sample I am giving you here, converted far more successfully than Salvatorino or Malipiero ever achieved’.10 Bergalli also records that ‘we may surmise from various passages in her Rime that she was Venetian, and that she lived around the time of the Duke of Florence’s marriage to Bianca Cappello, who was the intended dedicatee of this work, as we can gather from the dedicatory letter at the beginning of her Rime’. Nonetheless, Bergalli attributes the selection of religious rewritings of Petrarch to which she gives a salient place in place in her 1726 collection, Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo (which has been designated ‘the most complete and comprehensive reconstruction of Italian Renaissance women’s lyric’)11 to an ‘Unknown Author’ (Incerta), rather than to Colao. Bergalli anthologizes Colao’s spiritual rewritings of the 26 fragmenta which open the second volume of her Componimenti poetici in an order that 8 9 10 11

‘fortuna fè il mio viver duro’. Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.9. Degli Agostini 1754: II.445. Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.283–4. Cox (ed.) 2013: 188.

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does not strictly correspond with the equivalent sequence in Petrarch’s RVF. The prominence of the position given to this Incerta may be registered in terms of the high number of compositions she ranks within the anthology, higher than that given to very well-known female poets such as Veronica Gambara (who has eighteen texts in Bergalli’s anthology); Isabella Andreini (fourteen texts); Lucrezia Marinella (fourteen texts); and Laura Terracina (thirteen texts). Colao’s place is inferior only to the sections reserved to Gaspara Stampa (who has thirty-five texts in the anthology), or Vittoria Colonna (who has twenty-six). However much the canon of female Petrarchism proposed by Bergalli is skewed by her focus on poets from the Veneto, and her penchant for religious lyric, the generous anthology of compositions by Colao which Bergalli offers up to her readers remains very striking within the context of a cross-chronological collection that gives place to a grand total of 253 poets. The salience that Bergalli gives to Colao makes her anonymity within Bergalli’s collection still more problematic. This anonymity may reflect the fact that Colao’s verse had only circulated up to this point in manuscript (and that, indeed, up to the present day, it is found only in two manuscripts, in the libraries of Treviso and Vittorio Veneto).12 These manuscripts of Colao’s writings contain spiritual rewritings of 157 Petrarchan texts in total, with different redactions of the same text in some cases, and many variant readings. All the fragmenta that Colao chose for rewriting belong to the first part of Petrarch’s Canzoniere: the part whose verses require the greatest degree of corrective work in order to reorient the poetic praise from the earthly creature to the celestial Creator and to reconfigure within a religious perspective situations, images and stylistic features characteristic of love lyric.13 This section of Petrarch’s work is, however, also that in which the most intense crisis of the lyric ‘I’, torn between the impulses of an unquenchable erotic desire and the consciousness of a divine love that may be attained through an act of will, offers a very apt psychological model for the delineation of a poetic subject, like Colao’s, not yet quite resolved in her penitential trajectory. From a metrical point of view, Colao’s choices are generous and ambitious, in the sense that she engages with all the metrical forms present in the entire Canzoniere. This metrical eclecticism distinguishes her hypertextual offering from that of Girolamo Malipiero (who rewrites the whole of the Canzoniere, but limits himself to Petrarch’s sonnets and canzoni), and 12 For a first detailed analysis of the two manuscripts, see Torre 2017. 13 Cox 2011: 57.

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from that of Giovan Giacomo Salvatorino in his Thesoro di sacra scrittura sopra le Rime del Petrarcha (which extends to madrigals and ballate, but engages only with one canzone, though a very significant one, number 331). A closer precedent is the volume attributed to Stefano Colonna, I sonetti, le canzoni, et i triomphi di m[adonna] Laura in risposta di m[esser] Francesco Petrarcha, a work that, by simulating response texts from Petrarch’s beloved in reply to his poems, in the style of sonnet exchanges, offers us a complete moralization of every poem in the Canzoniere. Colao seems to take this last work into account in elaborating some of her stylistic and thematic solutions. We can take as an example the opening fragmentum of the sequence, which Colao reworked in various redactions, with differing approaches to the hypotext, which all nonetheless reveal her desire to assert an autonomous authorial identity. Voi che in queste mie rime udite il suono del sublime Toscano in altro amore fuggir v’esorto il giovenil errore, mentre sperar si può dal Ciel perdono. In debil voce e stil, piango e ragiono, e profonda cagion ha il mio dolore; che in vana speme ho già nudrito il core e fatto abuso del celeste dono. E ben ei vede come al popul tutto favola vien col tempo (onde sovente meco sola pensando mi vergogno) chi dal suo vaneggiar spera buon frutto: però si de’ conoscer chiaramente che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno. (Colao, Rime (versione A))

Qual più soave e più leggiadro suono bramar potrebbe un generoso core, se ne lo stil d’ogn’altro il più migliore la Divina harmonia s’udisse e il tuono. Così, Donne gentil’, s’a voi ragiono e scuopro la cagion del mio dolore, le lagrime, i sospir’, l’esca d’amore, bramo lodiate in Dio tal grazia e dono, che contra noi vedendo il popol tutto con l’arme di quel empio, onde sovente siam vinte, tra me stessa meco mi vergogno, Poi che’l seme, qual rende un sì vil frutto, son le bellezze ornate inutilmente, ch’appariscon di fuor qual ombra e sogno. (Colao, Rime (versione B))

Colonna and Pe tr arch in the Rime of Lucia Col ao

You who in these my rhymes listen to the sound of the sublime Tuscan in a different love, I exhort you to flee youthful error, while you can still hope for pardon from Heaven. In a feeble voice and style, I weep and reason, and my sorrow has a profound cause; for in vain hope I have nurtured my heart, abusing my celestial gift. And we see that those who expect their love madness to lead to some good end become an object of scorn to all, wherefore often thinking of this alone, I am ashamed. This is the reason why we should clearly know that what pleases the world is a brief dream.

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What sweeter or more pleasing sound could a noble heart long for, if, in the finest style of all, divine harmony and thunder could be heard. In this way, gentle ladies, if I reason with you and reveal the causes of my pain, the tears, the sighs, the lure of love, I would wish you to praise in God that grace and gift. All stand against us women, armed with the weapons of the evil one, so that we are often defeated, and I am often ashamed as I think of this; for the seed that renders such vile fruit are those worthless ornaments of beauty, which show themselves on the surface as mere shadow and dream.

Petrarch’s original reads as follows: Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono di quei sospiri ond’io nutriva ’l core, in sul mio primo giovenile errore, quand’era in parte altr’uom da quel ch’i’ sono. Del vario stil in ch’io piango et ragiono, tra le vane speranze e ’l van dolore; ove sia chi per prova intenda amore spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono. Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente di me medesmo meco mi vergogno; e del mio vaneggiar vergogna è ’l frutto, e ’l pentersi, e ’l conoscer chiaramente che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.14 You who listen in scattered rhymes to the sound of those sighs wherein I fed my heart, at the time of my first youthful error, when I was in part another man than I am now. may the varying style in which I weep and 14 Petrarca 2011: 3 (RVF 1).

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reason, amid my vain hopes and vain sorrow, among those who, through their own trials, understand what it is to love, I hope to find pity, no less than pardon. But I see now how I long served as a fable to all, so that often I am ashamed as I think myself over within myself; and shame is the fruit of my raving, and repentance, and a clear knowledge that what pleases the world is a brief dream.

Two texts of Colao’s found in the codex in Treviso and the manuscript in Vittorio Veneto contain a version of the text that is closer to the Petrarchan original (version A, above), while a rewriting of the sonnet found among the loose leaves of the Treviso version (version B) proposes a looser version, clearly influenced by the version of the text attributed to Stefano Colonna. In the case of this poem, as elsewhere, the rewriting by ‘Colonna’ does not offer us a true reply sonnet by Laura to a proposta by Petrarch, but rather a simple grammatical reconfiguration of the lyric voice, which pronounces the same message as the original. Laura may speak for herself here, but she does so only to express in the first person the same sentiments as her poet lover, reinforcing the same contrast between celestial ‘true love’ and earthly love, and showing herself to be at risk of becoming a shameful object of public scorn on account of her indulgence in the latter. Above all, we see her asking pardon for having drawn her lover ‘into amorous error’ (line 3; the negative moral implications of the complement ‘per me’ are very clear): Donne gentil’, che de’ sospiri il suono in rime udite, ove nudrisce il core chi per me vive in amoroso errore, lungi da quel camin dov’hor i’ sono. col basso e vario stil in cui ragiono, fra l’humane miserie e ’l van dolore, vi rappresento quel verace amore, dal qual ha l’alma il ciel, non pur perdono. Indi si specchia l’universo tutto, indi ne vien che nel pianto sovente di me favola al vulgo mi vergogno. E ch’al gustar del suo celeste frutto mi riconosco, pento, e chiaramente veggio ch’ombra è la vita, e ’l mondo sogno.15

15 S. Colonna 1552: 4r.

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Gentle ladies, you who listen to the sound of the rhyming sighs on which the man who for my sake lives in amorous error feeds his heart, far from that path where now I walk, in the lowly, varied style in which I reason, among human miseries and vain sorrow, I represent to you that true love through which the soul attains heaven, and not merely pardon. In this love, the whole universe comes to mirror itself; this love causes me often to feel tearful and ashamed, knowing I am the scorn of the vulgar throng. On tasting its celestial fruit, I know myself, and repent, and clearly see that life is shadow, and the world a dream.

The penitential configuration of the Laura-persona, strategically orchestrated by the voice of an apparent Laura-author, fulfils a clear exemplary function. The Laura of ‘Colonna’ ratifies her own modest, subaltern status (matched, as is proper, by a ‘lowly, varied style’), speaking before that public of ‘gentle ladies’, which, in the mid-Cinquecento, represented the ideal reader of Petrarch and Petrarchism. This public, in the text by ‘Colonna’, serves to define and qualify the generic voi of the hypotext, and it finds an implicit embodiment in the dedicatee of the work, Vittoria Farnese, who is invoked in the prefatory letter by Pietro Antonio Miero only as ‘Vittoria, beloved wife of the most excellent lord, Guidubaldo della Rovere’.16 Colao is herself an integral part of that collective female subject picked out in the formula ‘gentle ladies’, and she herself addresses her own verse to them in a more or less explicit manner. Despite its greater fidelity to Petrarch’s opening sonnet, version A of the rewriting demonstrates a full assumption of an authorial role on Colao’s part, and a recognition of the intertextual character of the relation between her own verses (‘in these my rhymes’), and those of Petrarch (‘the sound of the sublime Tuscan’). The original’s ‘sound of sighs’ is reduced here to the ‘sound’ of the reprise of the rhyme-words, which articulates the intertextual dynamic between Petrarch and Colao. Or, rather, it indicates the remembered echo of the stylistic and thematic model of the Canzoniere, which Colao’s Rime instantiates, in an interpretive and corrective performance. Implicitly affirming in this way the legitimacy of an independent lyric subjectivity, however respectful of masculine models (‘In a feeble voice and style, I weep and reason’), Colao actualizes within her own, feminine life experience the ‘youthful error’ of anyone, independent of their gender, who has preferred sensual love to a love that turns to God, the contemplation of the creature to the contemplation 16 S. Colonna 1552: Aiir: ‘Vittoria, moglie diletta dello eccellentissimo signor, il signor Guidubaldo dalla Rovere’.

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of the Creator (‘abusing my celestial gift’); and who now asks forgiveness for this transgression. The stylistic elaboration of the first quatrain of version A reveals at once the degree of Colao’s investment in this poetic project. The hyperbaton, the double enjambement, the inversion of the rhyme-words, all participate in a syntax that contributes to the ambiguity of the phrase ‘in a different love’. This can indicate either the profane love sung by the ‘sublime Tuscan’ (so that these lines could be paraphrased ‘the poetry of Petrarch, which centres on a love different from my own’), or the sacred love in which Colao exhorts her own audience to seek refuge from ‘youthful error’ (‘I exhort you to flee youthful error towards a different type of love’).17 Presented in an indistinct form in version A, this audience becomes more defined in version B of Colao’s rewriting, and it does so precisely through the reprise of the vocative donne gentili (‘gentle ladies’), which we have seen in the text of ‘Stefano Colonna’. This same appellative also recalls that with which Bembo designates Vittoria Colonna in his sonnet 138, to Paolo Giovio (from line 508): ‘Perché lo stil omai non rivolgete / a questa, novo in terra e dolce mostro, / donna gentil, che non di perle e d’ostro / ma sol d’onor e di virtute ha sete?’ (Wherefore do you not direct your own style to praise this new on this earth and sweet prodigy, a gentle lady, who thirsts not for pearls and for pomp, but merely for honour and virtue?)18 To this collective female subject, Colao addresses a new poetic experience which, though assimilated to the Petrarchan model in terms of form (‘the finest style of all’), intends to move beyond the lyric texture of the Canzoniere (and, indeed, the most memorable lines in Petrarch’s original have been effaced here), to offer a salvific poetic synthesis of the grace (‘harmony’) and the power (‘thunder’) of the divine word. We can catch an echo in these words of the reflections of Gabriele Fiamma in the proemial address to the reader of his Rime spirituali, on the need to renew modern lyric poetry (following the lead of Vittoria Colonna, as Fiamma notes in his dedication to Marcantonio Colonna), by recognizing and communicating the original character of poetry as a sacred discourse.19 The task of ‘evolving’ the Petrarch model, which is imitated in aesthetic terms, but not ideological, is conducted in Colao’s Rime through a constant grappling with that model. The author invites her readers to mirror themselves in the exemplary lyric confession of one who, despite being continually 17 In this second sense, Colao’s ‘altro amore’ may be an echo of the congedo of Petrarch’s sacred sestina, RVF 142. 18 Bembo 1968: 619. 19 Fiamma 1575: letter to the reader (unnumbered).

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assailed by Love, has nevertheless understood the full shamefulness of conceding victory to vain earthly pleasures. As in much religious lyric, so also in Colao, the poetic discourse follows a penitential model. In a way that differentiates her Rime from other ‘spiritual Petrarchs’, however, Colao develops this penitential model through the voice of a less stereotypical poetic subject. As an example, we might look at the way in which Colao treats one of the principal conceptual nuclei of Petrarch’s Canzoniere: the oxymoronic, paradoxical fluctatio animi between the desire to possess Laura and the urge to escape from her sway. As we can see in her rewriting of fragmentum 20, the staging of a situation of solitudine and impasse is counterbalanced in Colao by an urgent desire to speak and a profound faith in divine assistance: Sì mi sprona il desir che più non taccia, vergine eccelsa, tua bellezza in rima, e dica come simil non fu prima a te, né sarà mai, che tanto piaccia. ma tal peso non è da umane braccia, né opra da pulir con nostra lima, e chi per te lodar sua forza estima, nell’operazion tutto si agghiaccia. Però, se a dir di Te mie labbra apersi, fu perché tanto abbondi nel mio petto, non che per me salir possa tant’alto. se la mano alla penna in scriver versi porrò, dal tuo bel lume il mio intelletto sarà soccorso con benigno assalto.20 Desire spurs me such that I can no longer refrain, sublime Virgin, from speaking your praises in rhyme, and saying that there never was before, nor ever will be, one who so greatly pleases. But such a burden is not for human arms to carry, nor is it a work we can polish with our file. He who esteems his powers with a thought to praising you, will find that, in doing so, he turns to ice. Thus, if to speak of You I opened my lips, it was solely because you so greatly abound within my breast, and not because I can aspire so high through my own means. If I put my hand to the pen

20 The text is that found in print in Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.3. Italics within citations are my emphasis throughout.

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in order to write verses, my intellect will be aided by your rare light, in a kindly assault.

Stylistic and thematic affinities may be noted in Colao’s poem with the fourth sonnet of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime spirituali. We might remark, for example, the sequence of rhymes ‘rima’: ‘prima’: ‘lima’: ‘estima’, or the elaboration of the motif of poetry as a response to the overbrimming presence of the divine within the human.21 We might also compare Colao’s text with Colonna’s religious sonnet 53, in respect of the tension they dramatize between a burning inspiration and the extreme difficulty of crafting a worthy song of praise.22 As has been observed in the case of other spiritual rewritings of the Canzoniere, Colao’s revision of the Petrarchan original also encompasses a reconfiguration of the concept of space. An ideal testing ground for this is undoubtedly fragmentum 35, a sonnet that is itself a kind of turning point between a notion of poetry that draws on the classics and the experience of the Italian Stilnovo, on the one hand, and a notion of poetry as a progressive interiorisation of the love theme, on the other. This text is part of Petrarch’s liber fragmentorum from its earliest conception, and it offers a representation of the idea of solitude as self-exclusion of the poet-lover from the human community.23 Here is Petrarch’s original: Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi vo mesurando a passi tardi e lenti, e gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio uman l’arena stampi. Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi dal manifesto accorger de le genti, perché negli atti d’alegrezza spenti 21 ‘ma dal foco divin che ’l mio intelleto, / sua mercé, infiamma, convien ch’escan fore / mal mio grado talor queste faville’ ( Rather, these are sparks which must sometimes flicker forth unbidden from the divine fire that, through its own mercy, kindles my mind ). Colonna 1982: 87 (S1: 4). We should perhaps not forget that Colonna herself is the author of a text that reworks Petrarch, using the patchwork technique of the cento (A1: 15, ‘Occhi miei oscurato è il nostro sole’). 22 ‘Lo spirto è ben dal caldo ardour compunto, / e sereno dal bel lume il desio, / ma non ho da me forze a l’alta impresa’ (My spirit is indeed stung by that fierce ardour and my desire made serene by that lovely light, but I have no force within me for this high undertaking ). Colonna 1982: 111 (S1: 53). 23 For a comparative reading of the reworkings of this fragmentum by Malipiero, ‘Stefano Colonna’, and the eighteenth-century poet Pellegra Bongiovanni, see Fedi 1991.

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di fuor si legge com’io dentro avampi: sì ch’io mi credo omai che monti e piagge e fiumi e selve sappian di che tempre sia la mia vita, ch’è celata altrui. Ma pur sí aspre vie né sí selvagge cercar non so ch’Amor non venga sempre ragionando con meco, et io con lui.24 Alone and pensive, the most distant fields I go measuring with slow and tardy steps, and I train my eyes, that I may flee, on any place where a human vestige marks the sand. No other shield can I find to defend myself from the plainest recognition of those who watch, for in all my actions, bereft of any joy, may be read without how much I burn within—such that I believe that mounts and slopes and rivers and forests must know by now of what temper my life is, though it is hidden to others. But still, no path can I find so harsh and bleak that Love does not always tread at my side, reasoning with me, and I with him.

Here are the reworkings of Malipiero and of ‘Stefano Colonna’: Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi vo misurando a passi tardi e lenti, e gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio human la rena stampi. altro schermo non trovo, che mi scampi dal vano error de le volgari genti, se non che i spirti fuor mostrando spenti, dentro di casto amor il cor avampi. Mentre errando andai per monti e piagge, fu la mia vita di sì amare tempre, ch’una tal sorte mai non fu in altrui. Ma ad hor constante in cose aspre e selvagge mi rende di Iesu l’amor, che sempre sta meco fermo, et io lieto con lui.25

24 Petrarca 2011: 75 (RVF 35). 25 Malipiero 1536: 16r. 26 S. Colonna 1552: 18v.

Per monti, colli, boschi, valli e campi con l’alma pronta e passi fermi e lenti, con gli occhi lagrimosi al ciel intenti, ch’a pena veggio dove l’orme stampi, perché luogo non ho nel qual mi scampi dal periglioso viver de le genti, sola vo con pensier di gioia spenti, fuor dimostrando quanto dentro avampi. Onde che d’ogni intorno rivi e piagge omai conoscer posson di che tempre a me sia vita per fuggir altrui. né strade i’ so pensar tanto selvagge, o mio Signor, che travagliando sempre meco non venga il mondo et io con lui.26

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Alone and pensive, the most distant fields I go measuring with slow and tardy steps; and I train my eyes, that I may flee, on any place where a human vestige marks the sand. No other shield can I find to defend myself from the vain error of the vulgar throng, except that, while my spirits seem dulled without, within I my heart burns with a chaste love. While I went wandering on mounts and slopes, my life was of such bitter temper that never was such a fate known in others. But now my heart is rendered constant aong harsh and bleak things by the love of Jesus, who always is steady alongside me, while I am happy at His side.

Past mounts, hills, woods, valleys, and fields, with my soul at the ready and paces slow and firm, with my tearful eyes so fixed on heaven that I barely see where my steps fall; for there is nowhere I can flee the perilous life of my fellows. I go alone, with thoughts bereft of joy, showing without how much I burn within. So, all around, the slopes and riverbanks may know by now of what temper life is for me, in order to flee others; nor can I search out roads so bleak, O my Lord, that, much to my travail, the world does not come with me, and I with it.

In Malipiero, we can note the faithful preservation of the hypotext in the initial, narrative segment, serving to activate the poetic memory of his readers and to trigger a horizon of expectations which is then frustrated, at line 5, by the insertion of the ideologically charged keywords ‘vain error’ and ‘vulgar throng’. This trivialization of Petrarch’s language of introspection (with the fleeing into solitude transferred onto a purely metaphorical plane) serves, however, in Malipiero, to stigmatize the figure of the lyric ‘I’, lost in an errant wandering that is a false solution to his inner torments. In the Risposte di madonna Laura, the simulated feminine lyric ‘I’ is identified with the mythic figure of the solitary poet and justifies her self-exclusion from society as a necessary escape from the vices of the world. In Colao, by contrast, the narrative situation that we find in the hypotext and the other hypertexts is very different, as solitude is presented as an inner victory on the part of the devout, feminine, lyric subject, who, by entrusting herself to God in her meditations, succeeds in feeling happily alone even while she is surrounded by others and hence in joyfully confronting any path before her, however dangerous it seems:

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Solo sperando, i suoi fecondi campi solca l’agricoltore a passi lenti, e gli occhi fermi tien, mirando intenti come l’aratro suo la terra stampi. Così del mio bel Sole i chiari lampi miro, bench’io mi trovi tra le genti; e tanto sono i sensi miei contenti che il cor d’un dolce foco par che avvampi. Onde per tal diletto e monti, e piagge e fiumi, e selve, e le più chiare tempre seguir mi piace, e quanto sprezza altrui. E quelle vie, stimate aspre e selvagge, soavi e piane si mostrasser sempre, che il mio Lume stia meco, et io con Lui.27 Possessed by hope, the slow-paced farmer ploughs his fertile fields, his eyes fixed intently before him, gazing at his harrow as it scores through the earth. Just so do I gaze on the flashing beams of my lovely Sun, even when I find myself lost among the crowds, and my senses are so slaked by this vision that my heart seems to blaze with a sweet fire. This delight makes me search out mountains and plains and rivers and woods, and the clearest tempers and what others despise, and those roads considered most hard and bleak seem easy and smooth, just as long as my Light is with me and I with Him.

Just as the ecstatic intensity of the poet-persona’s meditations (‘I gaze … seems to blaze with a sweet f ire’) allows her to feel alone with God, even when she f inds hers ‘lost among the crowds’, so too the same prayerful experience serves to annul the sensation of solitude of the lyric subject, immersed as she is in a landscape which others despise, yet which, to her, seems ‘easy and smooth’. The poetic expression of solitude is here fully reconf igured in a Christian sense, as an opportunity for contemplative retreat; and perhaps the unsettling initial simile of the farmer (with all its gospel connotations) serves precisely as a mental image that helps structure the lyric subject’s meditation. The solitary farmer, who observes

27 Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.4.

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the furrows of his own f ields, in the hope that he will soon see rising from them the fruits of his hard labour (a gospel allusion, we might note, with a rich iconographical pedigree) is the counterpart of the lyric ‘I’ who, in the solitude of her contemplation of the crucif ied Christ, f ixes her gaze on the wounds of his harrowed body, seeing in them furrows from which a new life will emerge, or, perhaps, eyes, sources of light, in which she may mirror herself in order to interrogate her own memory. Colao’s own ‘flashing beams’ are probably gazing on the ‘true and invisible light’ which ‘shines out at us from among his open wounds’, to cite Vittoria Colonna’s sonnet ‘Poi che la vera ed invisibil luce’. Similarly, the superimposition of the images of wounds and of furrows that we f ind in Colao’s poem recalls the ending of Colonna’s ‘A la durezza di Tomaso offerse’, where the ‘wound’ offered to the doubting Thomas is reflected in the ‘heaven to him … opened’ and in the ‘track’ left behind for all the faithful who follow. Poi che la vera ed invisibil luce n’apparve chiara in Cristo, ond’or per fede l’eterna eredità, l’ampia mercede fra l’aperte Sue piaghe a noi traluce, qual scorta infida e vano error ne ’nduce a por su l’alta glorïosa sede de l’alma il senso, che sol ombra vede, lasciando il vero Sol, ch’al Ciel conduce, la cui virtù con l’orma e con l’exempio, con la moderna istoria e con l’antica, ne chiama a sprona al dextro ed erto calle? Ma questo labirinto obliquo ed empio, che porta sempre in più profonda valle il cieco veder nostro ognora intrica.28

28 Colonna 1982: 115 (S1: 61). 29 Colonna 1982: 143 (S1: 118).

A la durezza di Tomaso offerse il buon Signor la piaga, e tai li diede ardenti rai ch’a vera ed umil fede l’indurato suo cor tosto converse. L’antica e nova legge li scoverse in un momento, ond’ei si vide erede del Ciel, dicendo: ‘è mio ciò ch’Ei possede! Sì, è Quel mio che tanto ben m’aperse!’. Ond’Ei li disse poi: ‘Maggior è il merto di creder l’invisibile per quella virtù che non ha in sé ragione umana’. Il Ciel fu a lui col bel costato aperto; a noi la strada assai più corta e piana, per fede, di trovar l’orma Sua bella.29

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Since the true and invisible light appeared to us clearly in Christ, and now, through faith, our eternal legacy and His great mercy shine out at us from among His open wounds, what treacherous guide, or what vain error, induces us to place our senses, which see only shadows, on the glorious high throne of our soul, while scorning the true Sun, who leads us to Heaven? Through the traces and the example that He left us, in the new history and the old, His virtue calls and spurs us to the true and steep path; but this labyrinth, oblique and fell, which draws us into an ever-deeper valley, continues to enmesh our blind vision.

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Faced with Thomas’s hardness, the good Lord offered his wound, and it gave off such burning rays that his hardened heart was converted at once to a true and humble faith. The old and the new law were uncovered to him in a moment, so that he saw himself heir to Heaven, such that he cried, ‘All that He possesses is mine! Even that with which he opened this great gift to me!’ Then Christ said to him, ‘Higher is the merit of believing in the invisible, through that power that exceeds human reason’. Heaven was opened to Thomas through that lovely opened rib; but to us has been shown a path that is more direct and easy: through faith to discover His fair trace.

The image of the stigmata encapsulates within itself several potential figurations of the notion of the sign, enabling a textualization of the body and of phenomenological reality.30 While maintaining the scheme found in the original text, of an inner dialogue between two states of the lyric ‘I’ (one impassioned; the other, rational), Colao’s rewriting of fragmentum 242 (‘Mira quel colle, o stanco mio cor vago’), for example, substitutes the generic distant ‘hill’, where Laura is to be found, with the hill of Golgotha, dominated by the ‘sign’ of the Cross, and the ‘open lake’ of Christ’s wound, into which the ‘desiring heart’ is directed (‘Enter there if you wish, for I am happy here’). Here is Colao’s reworking: ‘Mira quel segno, o stanco mio cor vago, ivi si pose quel che tanto n’ebbe in pregio e stima, e sì di noi gl’increbbe, che fece del suo sangue aperto lago. 30 See Torre 2016.

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Entra tu là, ch’io d’esser qui m’appago, e come vuol ragion, tempo sarebbe di pianger nostro error, che tanto crebbe quanto fosti partecipe e presago’. ‘A te, Donna, convien porre in oblio l’ambizion che spesso porti teco— dice egli—e’ tuoi disdegni vani, e sciocchi. Così ti accenderai d’un bel desio, con quella che dal Ciel ne invita seco, se tanto ti dilettan suoi begli occhi’. (Colao, Rime)31 ‘Look at that sign, O weary desiring heart of mine. There hung Him who loved and valued us so, and who had such poor return for it, He who made of his blood an open lake. Enter there if you wish, for I am happy here, and, as Reason demands, this would be the time to weep for our error, which grew ever more grievous as you shared in and presaged it’. ‘You, Lady, need to relinquish that ambition that you often carry with you’, my heart says, ‘and your vain and foolish disdains. Thus, you will be fired with a fine desire, together with that lady who from Heaven invites us to join her, for so greatly are you pleased by her fair eyes’.

We can see here the same metaphorical figurations of the stigmata as a fount of salvation or a protective haven for the believer’s soul that are found, respectively, in Vittoria Colonna’s sonnets, ‘Penso ch’in ciel, con puri e lieti canti’ and ‘Ovunque giro gli occhi o fermo il core’.32 In the latter of these sonnets, in particular, emphasizing deictics, Colonna moulds the wounds of Christ as an autonomous inner space, a ‘safe harbour’ where the soul ‘lives at rest, and is honoured / for humble faith; where it struggles to renew itself in a better life’.33 This renewal within a ‘better life’ is also made possible through a revision of memories of the individual’s past life; and, indeed, it is precisely on the parallel reconfigurations of the individual memory of the lyric ‘I’ and the collective poetic memory that a great deal of the logic of spiritual rewritings relies, including that of Colao. If the memory of Petrarch’s poet-persona is assailed by innumerable, ineradicable images 31 Bergalli (ed.) 1726: II.10. In line 13 we find an allusion to the mysterious dead female friend mentioned in others of Colao’s poems; see for example Cox (ed.) 2013: 348. 32 Colonna 1982: 192 (S2: 31); 119 (S1: 69). 33 ‘sicuro porto … s’appaga e vive, ivi s’onora / per umil fede, ivi tutta si strugge / per rinovarsi a l’altra miglior vita’.

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of the beloved, like a ‘terrain’ filled with the ‘marks’ of her tread (to cite the felicitous image of fragmentum 108), the memory of the new Christian lyric subject must necessarily reshape her own memory space, using the ordered structure and the powerful images that Christ has left us during his Passion, placing ‘holy examples and norms’ the length of the ‘holy trail’ of a via crucis: Avventuroso più d’altro terreno, dove il mio almo Signor fermò le piante, lasciando in quello essempi e norme sante, e ‘l tenebroso dì chiaro, e sereno. Deh, perché ogni mio senso non vien meno, e mi trasforma, come vero amante, sì ch’altro obbietto non mi stia davante, ma lo spirto sia in lui contento a pieno? Benché non speri di veder già mai quel sacro monte, pur seguendo l’orme vo con la mente per quel santo giro. E se in cor valoroso amor non dorme, spirto gentile, e tu che leggerai, manda, ti prego, al Ciel qualche sospiro. (Colao, Rime)34 O happier than any other terrain, that where my kind Lord halted his tracks, leaving in it holy examples and norms, and the shadowy day clear and serene. Ah, why does not my every sense lapse, and why am I not transformed, as a true lover, so that no other object is ever before me, but my spirit contents itself fully instead in Him? Although I can never hope to see that sacred mount, yet, following in his tracks, I go with my mind on His holy trail. And, if in a valorous heart, love does not sleep, gentle spirit, you who read, send, I pray you, some sigh to Heaven.

If Petrarch, as author, asks the identified addressee of his poem (his friend Sennuccio del Bene, addressed by name in the last tercet) to weep and sigh for Laura, Colao begs the gentle spirits who will read her work (that is, the ‘gentle ladies’ of her incipit) to share her mental path to the ‘sacred mount’: to lift a meditative song of prayer to Heaven, to transform themselves from readers to writers. Just as she had done herself, in the face of Petrarch’s

34 The text is cited from the Vittorio Veneto codex 683, c. 119r.

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poetry. Just as Gaspara Stampa had augured, before her, in that explicit rewriting of Petrarch that is the opening sonnet of her canzoniere, summoning onto the stage of her text the voice of her ideal—female—reader.35 Just as, finally, Vittoria Colonna had taught all female writers to do, as she resolved to write ‘to others what He suffered’ (ad altrui quel ch’Ei sostenne).36 In Vittoria Colonna’s poetic activity, we can observe the lyric ‘I’s progressive development of the dimension of inwardness and of a new form of poetry / meditation / prayer. Thanks to Colonna’s immediate, powerful exemplarity, as a new figure of a laywoman (modelling a female author devoted to a poetry that can be seen as an act of worship), and thanks also to the diffusion of printing (which lessens the division between elite and popular literature), this new poetry was able to define and nurture a new audience of readers, open to women’s writing and to religious poetry. The task of spiritually recasting the Petrarchan Canzoniere, pursued with such ingenuity and steadiness of aim by Lucia Colao represents a further confirmation of this cultural shift.

Bibliography Abbreviations Sapegno

Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

Manuscripts Treviso, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 3125. Vittorio Veneto, Biblioteca di Vittorio Veneto, MS 683.

35 See especially line 9: ‘And I hope that some lady will say … ’ (E spero ancor che debba dir qualcuna … ). See Cox (ed.) 2013: 92 for a bilingual edition. 36 Colonna 2005: 56. Cfr. Brundin 2016a: 165: ‘It is worth noting that, at the beginning of the gift manuscript for Michelangelo, Colonna sets out to establish a conversation: she writes “to others” (a variant with regard to print versions of the sonnet, where the same line reads “So that I can write for myself”; “Sì ch’io scriva per me”). She has recourse to her own experience as an instrument for communicating with others’.

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Primary works Bembo, P. (1968) Rime, ed. C. Dionisotti. Turin. Bergalli, L. (ed.) (1726) Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo … Parte prima, che contiene le rimatrici antiche fino all’anno 1575. Parte seconda, che contiene le rimatrici dell’anno 1575, fino al presente. Venice. Colonna, S. (1552) I sonetti, le canzoni et i triomphi di m[adonna] Laura in risposta di m[esser] Francesco Petrarcha per le sue rime in vita di lei. Venice. Colonna, V. (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. ––– (2005) Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. A. Brundin. Chicago. Fiamma, G. (1570) Rime spirituali del R.D. Gabriel Fiamma … esposte da lui medesimo. Venice. Giustinian, O. (1998) Rime, ed. R. Mercatanti. Florence. Malipiero, G. (1536) Il Petrarca spirituale. Venice. Petrarca, F. (2011) Canzoniere. Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ed. S. Stroppa. Turin.

Secondary works Brundin, A. (2016a) ‘Poesia come devozione: leggere le rime di Vittoria Colonna’, in Sapegno: 161–75. Cherchi, P. (2004) L’onestade e l’onesto raccontare del Decameron. Florence. Cox, V. (2011) The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Degli Agostini, G. (1754) Notizie istorico-critiche intorno alla vita e le opere degli scrittori viniziani. Venice. Fedi, R. (1991) ‘Soli e pensosi. Censura, parodia, fortuna di un sonetto petrarchesco (RVF XXXV)’, Lingua e stile 26/3: 465–81. Föcking, M. (1994) Rime Sacre und die Genese des barocken Stils: Untersuchungen zur Stilgeschichte geistlicher Lyrik in Italien 1536–1614. Stuttgart. Forni, G. (2009b) ‘Vittoria Colonna, la “Canzone alla Vergine” e la poesia spirituale’, in Rime sacre dal Petrarca a Tasso, ed. C. Delcorno and M. L. Doglio. Bologna: 63–94. Graf, A. (1888) Attraverso il Cinquecento. Turin. Hempfer, K. W. (2004) Letture discrepanti. La ricezione dell’Orlando Furioso nel Cinquecento. Modena. Luzzi, C. (2013) ‘Censura e rinnovamento cattolico nell’età della Controriforma: i travestimenti spirituali del Petrarca e il madrigale’, in Congresso internazionale di musica sacra. Vatican City: 321–39.

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Quondam, A. (1991) Il naso di Laura: lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del Classicismo. Modena. ––– (2005) ‘Note sulla tradizione della poesia spirituale e religiosa (prima parte)’, in Paradigmi e tradizioni, ed. A. Quondam. Rome: 127–211. Savorgnan di Brazzà, F. (2011) Scrittura al femminile nel Friuli dal Cinquecento al Settecento. Udine. Schick, U. (1983) ‘Malipieros Petrarcha spirituale als Canzoniere-Allegorese’, in Interpretation. Das Paradigma der europäischen Renaissance-Literatur, ed. K. W. Hempfer and G. Regn. Wiesbaden: 272–87. Torre, A. (2010) ‘Orlando santo. Riusi di testi e immagini tra parodia e devozione’, in ‘Tra mille carte vive ancora’. Ricezione del Furioso tra immagini e parole, ed. L. Bolzoni, S. Pezzini and G. Rizzarelli. Lucca: 255–79. ––– (2013–14), ‘Il silenzio di Boccaccio. Note su una controparodia di fine Cinquecento’, in Levia Gravia 15–16: 515–30. ––– (2016) ‘Writing on the body and looking through its wounds: the mnemonic metaphor of the stigmata in Emanuele Tesauro’s Rhetoric’, in Jesuit Image Theory, ed. W. De Boer, K. A. Enenekel and W. S. Mellion. Leiden: 102–18. ––– (2017) ‘Una riscrittura spirituale femminile dei Fragmenta: le Rime di Lucia Colao’, L’Ellisse 12/1: 61–88. ––– (2019) Scritture ferite. Innesti, doppiaggi e correzioni nella letteratura rinascimentale. Venice. Ussia, S. (1999) Le muse sacre. Poesia religiosa dei secoli XVI e XVII. Borgomanero.

About the author Andrea Torre is Associate Professor in Italian Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He has published the books Petrarcheschi segni di memoria. Spie, postille, metafore (2008), Vedere versi. Un manoscritto di emblemi petrarcheschi (2012) and Scritture ferite. Innesti, doppiaggi e correzioni nella letteratura rinascimentale (2019).

14. ‘I Take Thee’: Vittoria Colonna, Conjugal Verse and Male poeti colonnesi* Shannon McHugh

Abstract It is widely known that Vittoria Colonna influenced female love lyricists, as well as spiritual Petrarchists of both genders. Generally unrecognized is the impact her amorous verse had on male love poets. This chapter traces Colonna’s impact via the Petrarchan sub-tradition of ‘conjugal verse’, or poetry for one’s spouse: f irst on Pietro Bembo; then on Neapolitan widowers in her cultural sphere (Bernardo Tasso, Berardino Rota); and down through a line of husband poets stretching to the early years of the seventeenth century. An examination of this verse lineage expands our understanding of the full extent of Colonna’s authority—and, accordingly, that of Italian women writers more broadly, rarely seen as innovators in Renaissance literary movements. Keywords: Counter-Reformation, early modern marriage, rime amorose, Giuliano Goselini

A decade ago, in an essay on Italian literature and gender, Rebecca West reflected on the immortality imbued by ‘becoming an adjective’.1 She pointed out that the Italian tradition is thick with authorial modifiers: dantesco; petrarchesco. Yet for women writers, rising to the critical status of adjective is all but unheard of. * Warmest thanks to Virginia Cox for her counsel on this topic, and to Anna Wainwright, Jessica Goethals, Melissa Swain and Danielle Callegari for their comments on this essay. 1 West 2012.

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch14

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What follows here is an essay about Vittoria Colonna, authority and male poeti colonnesi. Colonna’s impact on sixteenth-century Italian women writers, especially of love lyric, has been well recognised.2 Similarly widely accepted is her importance for spiritual Petrarchists of both genders.3 Much rarer, however, is acknowledgement of her influence on love poetry authored by male writers. I aim to show how ‘conjugal verse’—love poetry about marital love, rather than unrequited passion—flourished in Italy as an alternative but persistent vein of love lyric after Colonna’s model. 4 This subgenre functions differently from traditional amorous verse in important, inherently philogynous ways, by praising historically specific women rather than abstracted and idealised love objects. The fact that this subcategory of Petrarchism had at its head a woman writer only increases its feminist bona fides. Through the conjugal verse tradition, I argue, it is possible to trace a line of descent from Colonna, on to Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), onward to a group of versifying widowers in her Neapolitan cultural sphere, and down through a series of husband-poets stretching into the early seventeenth century. Acknowledgement of this genealogy grants us fuller appreciation of Colonna’s role in the Italian canon. First, it highlights the originality of her love lyric, emphasizing ways in which her rime vedovili (‘verse of widowhood’) struck a ‘contrast’ with Petrarch’s corpus, as well as her purposeful and ‘significant innovations’ on Bembo’s model.5 Second, it confirms the duration of Colonna’s significance, during the Counter-Reformation and beyond. In this way, the present chapter joins recent work by Virginia Cox, as well as the contributions to this volume by Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, Andrea Torre and Anna Wainwright, in correcting a long-held misconception that her poetry went out of fashion following the Council of Trent.6 Third, it demonstrates Colonna’s influence on male contemporaries with whom she is more commonly associated as pupil or muse. Such a study expands our understanding not only of the authority of Colonna, but that 2 Rabitti 2000; Sapegno 2003; Cox 2005a; Cox 2008, especially 114–15; Robin 2016; Lalli 2017; Stella 2019. See also Anna Wainwright’s essay in this volume. 3 See Quondam 1991: 204 for Colonna’s virtual invention of the subgenre of spiritual Petrarchism, as well as Cox 2008: 71–2. 4 On Colonna’s presentation of marital passion, see McHugh 2013. 5 Crivelli 2014: 122n24; Sapegno 2003: 15–16. 6 Cox 2011: 56, speaking of Colonna’s ‘widely acknowledged … founding role’ for spiritual Petrarchism, including for women writers through the Counter-Reformation. For Colonna’s impact on a male poet of this period, the influential Angelo Grillo (1557–1629), see McHugh 2020: 155-8.

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of women writers more broadly, rarely seen as innovators in Renaissance literary movements, as Virginia Cox has observed.7 Colonna did not invent marital poetry. Its history dates back at least to the biblical verse of the Song of Songs. Closer to Colonna in terms of both temporal and geographic proximity, Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), the most prominent humanist in Quattrocento Naples, composed an important collection of conjugal verse in Latin: De amore coniugali (On Married Love, composed 1461–90, printed 1505) is an expansive, three-book collection of amorous elegies celebrating his domestic bliss with wife Adriana Sassone (d. 1490).8 Pontano’s work almost certainly influenced Colonna’s own, a fact suggested not only by their shared poetic thematics, but also by the overlap in membership between the cenacoli, or literary circles, the two poets oversaw in Naples and on Ischia, respectively.9 Beyond Pontano, we find individual poems for spouses being circulated by Colonna’s contemporaries, such as Veronica Gambara (1485–1550) and Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533).10 In sum, Colonna was not Italy’s first conjugal poet. However, she was the most influential. In 1538, when Colonna’s poetry was published as a volume, it became the first conjugal verse canzoniere—a model that would persist, that would know afterlives in the form of other poets’ tributes and imitations.11 That process began during her lifetime, in the form of poetry by her intimate friend and interlocutor, Pietro Bembo.

Authorization: Bembo’s conjugal verse (1530–1548) Pietro Bembo’s earliest extant letter to Colonna, from January 1530, makes clear that he read her verse as inextricable from her marriage, describing the poems as ‘your many sonnets written on the death of the Marchese, your husband’.12 Bembo was by then the author of Prose della volgar lingua 7 Cox 2008: 78, as well as her Introduction to the present volume (p. 25). Dodds and Dowd 2018 is useful here on the need to extend to early modern women’s writing the same formalist evaluation we do male authors. 8 Parenti 1985; Soranzo 2012; Roman 2014. Pontano’s collection is available with facing translation as Pontano 2014. 9 For the intellectual genealogy between the two circles, see Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 150–3, as well as her essay in this volume. 10 Rosalba 1895: 92–3. 11 Colonna 1538. It is well known that Colonna did not authorize this publication; see Crivelli 2016. 12 Colonna 1892: 61 (letter XL, from Bologna): ‘molti sonetti vostri fatti per la morte del sig[n]or Marchese, vostro marito’.

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(Writings on the Vernacular Language, 1525) and featured speaker of the closing segment of Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528), soon to put into print the first edition of his Rime (1530). His mentorship of Colonna is well documented, including his publication of one of her poems, along with his response, in the second edition of his Rime (1535).13 It is worth considering, though, whether he was also her first pupil, at least within the tradition of conjugal verse. During the early years of their friendship, Bembo suffered the death of his long-time consort, Ambrogina Faustina Morosina della Torre (1497–1535).14 Because her first marriage was never annulled, she and Bembo were never able to marry legally; but by all indications, their relationship was a ‘marriage in all but name’.15 The two had three children together, and when she died in 1535, they had been living under the same roof for twenty-two years. Their private communications convey a mutual, abiding affection and respect. One of her letters to him moved the scholar Carlo Dionisotti to describe her as ‘a woman worthy of loving and of being loved’.16 Following her death, Bembo wrote to his friend Trifone Gabriele, ‘I cannot but lament and wonder at the stars, that they should deprive me of her, and her of enjoying a life most innocent and deserving to endure’.17 Their sons were legitimated by the pope, and the relationship did not prevent Bembo from being elevated to a cardinalship after her death. Tellingly, Veronica Gambara, bastion of moral rectitude, did not hesitate to send Bembo a consolatory poem on the occasion of Morosina’s death.18 ‘Concubinage’, as scholars term arrangements such as Bembo and Morosina’s, was not so uncommon as to have been considered illicit, and the practice has been particularly well-documented in Bembo’s hometown of Venice, where it has recently been examined through the more progressive lens of ‘consensual marriage’.19 In short, by the social standards of the time, Bembo’s poetry for Morosina was a kind of ‘verse of widowerhood’. 13 On Bembo and Colonna, see Dionisotti 2002 (originally 1981); Rabitti 1992; Cox 2008: 53–64; and Maria Serena Sapegno’s essay in this volume. 14 On Morosina, see Ratti 1902; Travi 1980; Pertile 2006. 15 Braden 1999: 95. For a similar appraisal, see Vecce 2013: 283 (‘his enduring relationship more uxorio with Morosina’). 16 Dionisotti 1966: ‘donna degna di amare e di essere amata’. 17 Bembo 1987–93: III.609–10 (letter 1708): ‘non potea non dolermi e ramaricarmi delle stelle, che e me di lei, e lei privata avessero del godere la sua così innocente vita e così degna di bastar sempre’. 18 Gambara 2014: 80–1 (‘Quella donna gentil, ch’amaste tanto’). 19 Cowan 2013: 117–34; Byars 2018.

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Of course, Bembo’s poetry for Morosina—several in vita poems, as well as a better-known in morte sequence—also exhibits clear reliance on Petrarch’s poetry for Laura.20 Take for example Bembo’s sonnet 158, composed in 1536, on the one-year anniversary of Morosina’s death. In that poem, Bembo refers to his beloved as ‘the flower of all valour combined with the flower of all beauty’ (il fior d’ogni valore / col fior d’ogni bellezza inseme aggiunto).21 The reference is to RVF 186, where Petrarch declares that if Virgil and Homer had known Laura, they would have mixed their epic style with amorous lyric in order to sing her praises. Petrarch records these two registers as two different ‘flowers’: Scipio Africanus, ‘that ancient flower of virtues and of arms’ (quel fiore antico di vertuti et d’arme), and Laura, ‘new flower of chastity and beauty’ (novo fior d’onestate et de bellezze). Bembo’s imitation is apparent, as is his innovation. Whereas Petrarch compares two flowers, marked by disparate gendered traits (Scipio’s masculine, epic bellicosity; Laura’s feminine, lyric chastity), Bembo combines them into a single bloom (Morosina) exhibiting both. Only this seems not have been Bembo’s innovation. Colonna, in the incipit to A1: 58, imitates the same Petrarchan sonnet, describing her husband Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos as ‘that flower of all worth’ (quel fior d’ogni virtute).22 Though it can be difficult to trace the vector of imitation between contemporary Petrarchists, we can conclude with some certitude that Colonna’s poem predates Bembo’s. Her A1: 58 first appeared in print in 1538, but it had likely been composed some years earlier. A letter by Carlo Gualteruzzi (1500–c. 1544), oft-cited by scholars, in which he states that Colonna has turned her writing definitively to spiritual verse, marks June 1536 as the terminus ante quem.23 Meanwhile, Dionisotti dates Bembo’s poem to August 1536, the one-year anniversary of Morosina’s death.24 Moreover, the grafting of the twin blooms into one would have simply been more natural in Colonna’s poetry than in Bembo’s: because her beloved was a real-life war hero—‘“literally” epic’—he quite organically embodied the epic and

20 Bembo 1966: 635–47. The in morte poetry appeared for the first time in the posthumous edition of Bembo’s Rime (1548). The sequence commences at no. 149 and concludes with no. 162. A handful of earlier amorous poems are interspersed. 21 Translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 22 Numbering of poems is taken from Colonna 1982. 23 ‘la Signora Marchesa di Peschara ha rivolto il suo stato a Dio, et non scrive d’altra materia’ (the Lady Marchioness of Pescara has turned herself to God and writes of no other matter). Cited in Moroni 1984: 65. On Gualteruzzi’s relationship with Colonna, see Lalli 2018. 24 Bembo 1966: 642.

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the amorous simultaneously.25 Having established the probable order of composition, it becomes apparent that Bembo’s debt to Colonna is further suggested by the syntagm ‘fior d’ogni’. That a close reading of Bembo’s poetry would indicate Colonna’s influence on him should hardly surprise us. Conceptually, Colonna’s body of verse was the closest model for Bembo’s lyric on the death of the woman who had lived as his wife for more than two decades. The five-year period between Bembo’s introduction to Colonna’s poetry in 1530 and Morosina’s death in 1535 marks the height of the two poets’ correspondence and of Bembo’s fascination with Colonna’s lyric (which in those years was about little besides her husband), the culmination of which was his inclusion of her lyric in the 1535 Rime. In the epistolary record, Bembo’s every word about Colonna shows that he saw her as someone worthy of imitation: he praised her poetry effusively; he described her as one of the soundest judges of his own lyric; and despite his position of authority, he strove to impress her with his own verse and even sought her critical feedback.26 Bembo was the primary arbiter of poetic taste at this moment of Italian literary history. When his definitive 1548 collection was published with its sequence reproducing in miniature Colonna’s innovative conjugal canzoniere, love for one’s spouse—in addition to the beloved-from-afar—became a sanctioned element of the Petrarchist canon.

Canonization: Naples’ widower poets (1549–1572) The strands of imitation apparent in Bembo’s 1548 Rime became more explicit and more numerous in the following decades. We find a node of conjugal verse among three Neapolitan poets who were closely connected to Colonna from her years on Ischia: Bernardo Tasso (1493–1569); Berardino Rota (1509–75); and Galeazzo di Tarsia (c. 1520–53). Tasso and Rota had participated in the cenacolo led by Colonna and Costanza d’Avalos in the early 1530s, and each composed numerous poems for her; though the details of di Tarsia’s connection are cloudier, most scholars place him at the Ischian literary gatherings, and at the very least, he was connected to Colonna

25 Cox 2005b: 599. 26 Dionisotti 2002; Brundin 2016b: 63–7; Sanson 2016: 211–15. Bembo’s letters demonstrate his openness to receiving literary advice from other woman writers, such as Maria Savorgnan; see Braden 1996: 415 on their amorous, epistolary ‘poetry workshop’.

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through his family.27 Each poet praised her effusively in verse.28 These men’s wives all died within a few years of each other—Camilla Carafa (d. 1549), wife of di Tarsia; Porzia de’ Rossi (d. 1556), wife of Tasso; and Porzia Capece (d. 1559), wife of Rota—and each poet subsequently began circulating conjugal verse in manuscript. Both Tasso and Rota first published their verse in 1560.29 Di Tarsia’s poetry circulated in manuscript until a collection was printed decades after his death, in 1617.30 Scholars have previously grouped these men with Colonna as ‘conjugal poets’.31 What has not been noted, however, is her place of primacy among them. What is most striking about this generation’s conjugal verse is the distinctiveness—in terms of both separateness and significance—with which it is arranged for the reading public. For one, Tasso’s and Rota’s poetry includes the term ‘marital love’—maritale being a word apparently unknown in the Petrarchan lexicon before this point. For another, whereas Bembo had published around a dozen poems about Morosina, both Tasso’s and Rota’s collections contained around fifty; in subsequent editions, published later in 1560 through 1572, Rota would increase the total count to well over two hundred.32 Arguably even more impressive than the quantity of poems is the quality of their presentation. Bembo’s verse for Morosina had been grouped together as a unified body but were unlabelled within the larger canzoniere. Tasso’s marital sequence is set apart from poems on unrequited love, near the end of the collection, under the heading ‘On the death of the poet’s wife’ (In morte de la moglie) (Fig. 14.1).33 Rota’s collection is even more remarkable in its foregrounding of the conjugal experience, especially in the first printing (Rota 1560a), where marital verse makes up not a portion of the collection, but the entire volume, as the title makes clear: Sonetti del 27 On the Ischian literary circle, see Thérault 1968 and Robin 2007: 3–8. (The term cenacolo comes from the title of Thérault 1968; for elaboration, see Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 150n108.) Regarding Galeazzo di Tarsia, we know that a poet by that name attended the Ischian gatherings. Traditionally, this poet has been identified as the same Galeazzo di Tarsia who composed verse for Vittoria Colonna and for his deceased wife in the mid-sixteenth century. However, it may be that the former was the latter’s ancestor, Galeazzo di Tarsia II (c. 1450–c. 1513). The surviving canzoniere is either entirely the production of the younger di Tarsia or a mixture of both men’s writing. On the conundrum, see Toscano 2004. 28 Thérault 1968: 234–43 (Tasso) and 253–64 (Rota); and more recently, on Colonna and Tasso, Magalhães 2020. 29 Available as Tasso 1995 and Rota 2000. On coincidence and mutual influence between Tasso’s and Rota’s conjugal verse, see Milite 2000: xix–xx. 30 Di Tarsia 2002. 31 Rosalba 1895: 92–3; Mammana 2001: 11. 32 For a description of Rota’s three editions and their contents, see Rota 2000: 644–7, 692–703. 33 Tasso 1560: V.79.

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Fig. 14.1 Bernardo Tasso, Rime di Messer Bernardo Tasso. Divise in cinque libri nuovamente stampate. Venice, Gabriele Giolito, 1560. Page view showing title of sequence on the death of the poet’s wife (V.79). Harvard Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA.

S[ignor] Berardino Rota in morte della S[igno]ra Portia Capece sua moglie (Fig. 14.2). Both Tasso and Rota give prominence to the word ‘wife’ in their titles; Rota is even more specific, including Capece’s first and last name. An examination of the poetry at the textual level corroborates Colonna’s influence. A noteworthy example is Tasso’s sonnet 165. In the tercets, he begs

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Fig. 14.2 Berardino Rota, Sonetti del S[ignor] Berardino Rota in morte della S[igno]ra Portia Capece sua moglie. Naples, Mattia Cancer, 1560. Title page. Harvard Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA.

his wife to rescue him from his despair, which he likens to a ship tossed upon the waves: ‘Non mi lasciar in questo oscuro inferno, / in questo di mondane orrido e vasto / tempeste mar, tu mio nocchiero e scorta’ (Do not leave me in this dark inferno in this dreadful, vast sea of wicked storms, you my captain and guide). The choice of the word ‘captain’ (nocchiero) here is significant. The term appears several times in Petrarch, though it is never used to refer to Laura; it does not appear in Bembo. Instead, it is Colonna who precedes

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Tasso in applying that term to the beloved, doing so in the opening of her famous canzone A1: 89: ‘Mentre la nave mia, longe dal porto, / priva del suo nocchier che vive in cielo’ (While my ship, far from port and deprived of her captain, who is now in heaven).34 Colonna’s poem would have been a felicitous choice for Tasso in terms of celebrating his wife’s ethos: Colonna’s canzone provides a catalogue of female exempla, among whom the final and lengthiest treatment is given to Brutus’ wife Portia—namesake of Tasso’s wife, Porzia. Simultaneously, the selection of this source text would also have made an especially fine tribute to Colonna, as she had employed her self–identification with the classical Portia in the canzone as a means to promote her own exemplarity.35 Moreover, it seems likely that Tasso intended his nautical metaphor to point readers to a third exemplary woman: Beatrice, referred to by Dante as ‘admiral’ (ammiraglio, Pur. 30.58), in the canto of their reunion in the afterlife. This possibility is reinforced by Tasso’s plea that his wife lead him through ‘this dark inferno’ (questo oscuro inferno). As Rachel Jacoff has pointed out, Dante’s admiral analogy reveals an appreciation for the ‘proper and positive possibilities of female guidance … exactly [at the moment when] Virgil is replaced by Beatrice’.36 In the tercet cited above, Tasso constructs a paean to his wife, praised as Beatricean captain and guide, in a sonnet simultaneously honouring Colonna as literary model. It is of interest in terms of social history to note that the sentiments expressed in Tasso’s verse seem to have been more than mere poetic posturing.37 His letters contain myriad, affectionate mentions of de’ Rossi. To one correspondent, Tasso describes his wife, then pregnant with their destined-to-be-famous son Torquato, as healthy, perfect and beloved, and their daughter Cornelia as winsome and smart: ‘after her mother, she is my very soul, and my every good’.38 Perhaps even more telling regarding Tasso’s views toward marriage is a letter Tasso composed to Cornelia in her adulthood, about her own future marriage, where he imagines ‘seeing you in a state of honour and tranquillity with the love of your husband’.39 The description suggests that Tasso experienced marriage as a companionate experience for both husband and wife, and that he passed on to his daughter 34 For the entire poem, with translation (here slightly amended) and commentary, see Cox (ed.) 2013: 141–5. 35 Cox 2016a: 495–501. 36 Jacoff 2008: 350. 37 On conjugal verse as sociohistorical artifact, see the final chapter of McHugh 2022. 38 ‘questa, dopo la madre, è l’anima mia, e tutto il mio bene’. Tasso 2002 (letter to Vettor de’ Franceschi). 39 ‘vedendoti in stato d’honore, e di quiete, con l’amor di tuo marito’. Tasso 2002 (no. LV).

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these expectations, borne of his apparent esteem for the women in his life in spheres both cultural and domestic. Colonna was an important authority for this generation. That is not to diminish their reliance on auctores like Dante, Petrarch and Bembo, but rather to expand our understanding of their sources. One measure of Colonna’s significance to these writers comes in another volume by Rota, the Egloghe piscatorie, published with the expanded conjugal verse collection in 1560 (Rota 1560b). In the dedicatory letter to that text, Scipione Ammirato praises the poetry contained therein by explaining that, at the Ischian literary gatherings, Colonna enjoyed the eclogues so much that she memorized them. 40 The statement illustrates how much her literary approbation was esteemed by these men, a stamp of approval worthy of boasting about in the opening paratexts of a publication. Other important poets from the Ischian circle, such as Luigi Tansillo (1510–68), clearly established themselves as ‘pupil’ (allievo) to Colonna, as Tobia Toscano has shown. 41 In the same article, Toscano relates a theory of significant interest in the present context. He posits that Alfonso d’Avalos (1502–46), Marchese del Vasto, the nephew by marriage who was like a son to Colonna, had been engaged in the 1520s and 1530s as the ‘animator’ behind an effort to maintain a distinctive Neapolitan vernacular literature, rather than allowing the region to be drawn to the Tuscan linguistic centre. 42 In Toscano’s account, this ‘resistance’ could not last forever: by Colonna’s death, he says, that regionality had fallen way, and the ‘Bembist triumph’ was complete. 43 Yet the verse of this school of widowers suggests that the battle was not lost, but was simply being waged on a different front: not language, but ethos. This is especially illuminating in light of what we know about connections between Colonna and the Neapolitan Pontano, as mentioned at the outset of this essay. It is relevant here to note that one of the Accademia Pontaniana’s standard meeting locations was the chapel in which the poet’s beloved wife, and later his children, were buried—meaning that the group’s creative endeavours were often housed in a space of conjugal mourning, one that Furstenberg-Levi has described as an important ‘expression and substantiation’ of Pontano’s ‘self-definition’, which was then concretized in his Latin conjugal verse collection. 44 Perhaps, in the 40 41 42 43 44

Rota 2005: 75. Toscano 1988. Toscano 1988: 766. Toscano 1988: 773. Furstenberg-Levi 2016: 68.

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wake of Pontano’s death, the participants who migrated from his circle to Colonna’s—Jacopo Sannazaro (c. 1456–1530) and others—ferried to the curious mind of a young, newlywed Colonna not only the literary practices of the older sodality, but also its ethos of conjugal devotion and creativity. Thus, the Neapolitan lineage of which had Alfonso dreamt would have been maintained: a poetics of domesticity that started with Pontano, reached its fullest realization in Colonna, and flourished after her death in a new generation of Neapolitan poets.

Evolution: Counter-Reformation poets (1563–1628) If we jump forward to the late sixteenth century and the decades following the Council of Trent (1545–63), we find Italian conjugal verse increasing significantly in quantity. 45 This is an area of Colonna’s influence that has been veiled due in part to general critical neglect of the literature of this period. 46 Notable examples include Giuliano Goselini (1525–87), who published over 150 poems for his wife Chiara Albignana, from 1572 onward; Orazio Lupi (b. 1556), whose 1587 volume of verse includes an exchange with his wife, Domenica Ombona, urging him to recover from mourning their deceased daughter; and Orsatto Giustinian (1538–1611), whose 1600 collection includes a mini-canzoniere for his wife Candiana Garzoni, with such Petrarchan novelties as a sonnet translating the classic poem on the anniversary of the beloved’s death into one about the anniversary of their nuptials. 47 We also find one of the most remarkable examples of a female conjugal poet, Francesca Turina (1544–1641), who published two large bodies of conjugal verse, in 1595 and 1628. 48 The main historical catalyst for the surge of conjugal verse was the Counter-Reformation. At the Council of Trent, Catholic leaders instituted a number of reforms meant to increase the Church’s control of both religious and secular life. Marriage rites and conjugal life were obvious targets, given the centrality of the family unit to both private and public life. The Church reaffirmed marriage as a sacrament, rather than merely a civil contract, 45 On this development, including the popularity of domestic verse for poets’ children, see Bruscagli 2007: 1577–8, 1614–15; Cox 2011: 53–4, 79–81. 46 Cox 2020 and Quondam 2020; regarding Colonna specifically, see Cox’s Introduction to this volume, p. 23. 47 On these poets’ conjugal verse, see, for Goselini, Bruscagli 2007: 1574–8 and Piantoni 2014; for Lupi, Cox 2011: 265, 307n169; for Giustinian, Mammana 2001. 48 Discussed in this collection in the essay by Anna Wainwright, with attendant bibliography.

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and condemned male infidelity. It is not surprising that such sweeping reforms, sanctifying and elevating marriage as they did, should find their way into the period’s literature. Conduct and advice texts of the period are especially revealing: as Brian Richardson has shown, there was a significant increase in treatises on marriage and a new emphasis on the desirability of reciprocal ‘marital love’ (amore maritale). 49 Lyric poetry adapted itself in a similar fashion, placing an increasing emphasis on conjugal felicity. Such verse did not become the dominant mode among Italian male love poets; one need only think of the rime amorose of Torquato Tasso (1544–95) or the popularity of sensual verse set in pastoral hideaways. But among some number of men, there clearly existed a desire to portray themselves as happily married, in a manner that was consonant with new communal values. This aspiration to conjugal fame becomes apparent if we examine the literary trajectory of Goselini. Secretary at the ducal court of Milan, he composed numerous political texts and published his Petrarchan verse widely, appearing in several Giolito anthologies and publishing four versions of his canzoniere in his lifetime.50 A fifth version of Goselini’s canzoniere was released in 1588, soon after his death. This edition opens with a short biography of the poet. After recounting Goselini’s numerous civic and intellectual accomplishments, the vita concludes on a rather more intimate note, describing his love for his wife. The account serves as implicit instruction for the reader on how to approach the poems to follow—namely, through the lens of marital devotion: ‘so perfectly enflamed was he with the most ardent love for her that for all of his life he never loved any woman but her; and it was for her that he, fine and grave poet that he was, composed the present canzoniere’.51 However, the declaration appears to be false. The first edition of the collection, from 1572, indicates as much, as it includes poems describing his love for a certain selva (woods); Riccardo Bruscagli posits this was the senhal of an earlier lover, likely a woman named Silvia.52 Goselini’s preferred symbol for his wife, instead, was a pun on her last name, Albignana: ‘alba’, the dawn, a moniker redolent of Colonna’s preferred epithet for d’Avalos, ‘bel sole’, or ‘fair sun’. That Goselini should address multiple beloveds was 49 Richardson 2000. 50 Giannini 2002; Piantoni 2014. 51 ‘dell’ardentissimo amore della quale fu così perfettamente acceso che per tutta la vita sua non amò altra donna giammai che lei, per la qual egli, che leggiadrissimo e gravissimo poeta era, compose il presente canzoniero’. Goselini 2014: 488. 52 Bruscagli 2007: 1576–7.

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not unusual; from Bembo to Tasso, it has been traditional for Petrarchist canzonieri to include poems for different women. Rather, what is strange is the way that Goselini apparently developed a disdain for this practice in his own verse, as becomes apparent in the structural and paratextual development of his canzoniere over its five printed editions. Each subsequent printing would employ a new strategy for stamping out Goselini’s former flame and increasingly emphasizing his fidelity to Albignana: 1572 1573

First edition featuring poems for both the alba and the selva Addition of a sequence for their son Giulio, as well as a poetic commentary penned by the poet, which speaks only of Albignana 1574 Inclusion of correspondence lyric, with multiple poets praising Albignana 1581 Addition of poem titles unifying all verse as being about their marriage 1588 Introductory biography with narrative of wife and marriage

The transformation is a testament to Goselini’s emphasis on his husbandly ethos. If there ever was a Silvia, by 1588, she had been entirely effaced. In a move worthy of a Vita nova-era Dante, Goselini composed a framework forcing the reader to approach every poem he had ever written within the teleology of his adoration for his wife, drafting for himself a love, and a canzoniere, that came to look a lot more like Colonna’s. The fact that Goselini’s poetry describes a love in vita is a significant difference from his model; and yet this disparity is also a testament to the evolutionary power of Colonna’s creation. No longer did the lyric spousal beloved have to be a distant light in the heavens; that person might be sitting right beside you. By the late sixteenth century, conjugal verse had enough vitality to become unmoored from Colonna in other ways as well, including geographically. Goselini and Lupi resided in Milan and Bergamo; Giustinian was Venetian; Turina published from Rome. Half a century after the f irst printing of Colonna’s verse, the subgenre had spread throughout the peninsula and taken on a life of its own.

Conclusion In the tercets of one sonnet for d’Avalos, A1: 30, Colonna reflects simultaneously on the purpose of the conjugal bond and of poetry: ‘Our bodies

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were sterile, our souls fertile; his valour and my name, united, make me mother of his famed offspring, which live immortal’.53 Though the couple was childless, they were able to create an heir: her poetry, issue of his deeds and her writing. And unlike living children, Colonna boasts, this child would live on, ‘immortal’. Nor were Colonna’s poems the end of her line. In Counter-Reformation poetry, we find similarities with Colonna’s that indicate that the matriarch of the tradition remained at the forefront of poets’ minds. This is a development in which her authority must be recognized. Famously cast as an Artemesia by Ariosto, Colonna posthumously came to have her own poetic remains interred within the lines of poets both female and male. Her conjugal verse was self-reproducing, ancestor to a lineage of poets of which Colonna was materfamilias. Conjugal verse was a pivotal evolution of Petrarch’s original in morte poetic model: innovated by Colonna, sanctioned by Bembo, and expanded in multiple subsequent generations of poeti colonnesi.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion DBI GSLI Innovation

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome. Giornale storico della letteratura italiana Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020) ed. S. McHugh and A. Wainwright. Newark, DE.

Primary works Bembo, P. (1548) Rime. Venice. ––– (1966) Prose e rime, ed. C. Dionisotti. Turin. ––– (1987–93) Lettere, ed. E. Travi, 4 vols. Bologna. ––– (1992) Prose e rime, ed. C. Dionisotti. Turin. Colonna, V. (1538) Rime della divina Vittoria Colonna marchesa di Pescara. Parma.

53 ‘Sterili i corpi fur, l’alme feconde; / il suo valor qui col mio nome unito / mi fan pur madre di sua chiara prole / la qual vive immortal’. For commentary, see Sapegno 2016: 176–8, and Targoff 2018: 27–8.

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––– (1892) Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller, with a supplement by D. Tordi, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. di Tarsia, G. (2002) Canzoniere, ed. P. Crupi. Catanzaro. Gambara, V. (2014) Complete Poems. A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. M. Martin and P. Ugolini. Toronto. Goselini, G. (2014) Rime (1588), ed. Luca Piantoni. Padua. Pontano, G. G. (2014) On Married Love. Eridanus, ed. and tr. L. Roman. Cambridge, MA. Rota, B. (1560a) Sonetti … in morte della S[igno]ra Portia Capece sua moglie. Naples. ––– (1560b) Sonetti e canzoni … con l’egloghe pescatorie. Naples. ––– (2000) Rime, ed. L. Milite. Parma. ––– (2005) Ecloghe piscatorie, ed. S. Bianchi. Rome. Tasso, B. (1560) Rime … [d]ivise in cinque libri nuovamente stampate. Venice. ––– (1995) Rime, ed. D. Chiodo and V. Martignone, 2 vols. Turin. ––– (2002) Lettere, ed. D. Rasi and A. Chemello. Bologna.

Secondary works Braden, G. (1996) ‘Applied Petrarchism: the loves of Pietro Bembo’, Modern Language Quarterly 57/3: 397–423. ––– (1999) Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance. New Haven. Brundin, A. (2016b) ‘Vittoria Colonna in manuscript’, in Companion: 39–68. Bruscagli, R. (2007) ‘La preponderanza petrarchesca’, in La letteratura tra l’eroico e il quotidiano: La nuova religione dell’utopia e della scienza (1573–1600), pt. 3 of Storia letteraria d’Italia—Il Cinquecento, ed. G. Da Pozzo. Padua. Byars, J. (2018) Informal Marriages in Early Modern Venice. New York. Cowan, A. (2013) Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice. Farnham. Cox, V. (2005a) ‘Women writers and the canon in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Vittoria Colonna’, in Strong Voices, Weak History: Women Writers and Canons in Early Modern England, France, and Italy, ed. P. J. Benson and V. Kirkham. Ann Arbor: 14–31. ––– (2005b) ‘Sixteenth-century women Petrarchists and the legacy of Laura’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 25/3: 583–606. ––– (2008) Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore. ––– (2011) The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore. ––– (2016a) ‘The exemplary Vittoria Colonna’, in Companion: 467–501. Cox, V. (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore.

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Cox, V. and C. Ferrari (eds.) (2012) Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies. Bologna. Crivelli, T. (2014) La donzelletta che nulla temea. Percorsi alternativi nella letteratura italiana tra Sette e Ottocento. Rome. ––– (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. Dionisotti, C. (1966) ‘Bembo, Pietro’, in DBI, 8. ––– (2002) ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’ (1981), in Scritti sul Bembo, ed. C. Vela. Turin: 115–40. Dodds, L. and M. M. Dowd (2018) ‘The case for a feminist return to form’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13/1: 82–91. Furstenberg-Levi, S. (2016) The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network. Leiden. Giannini, M. C. (2002) ‘Gosellini (Goselini), Giuliano’, in DBI 58. Jacoff, R. (2008) ‘Canto XXX: at the summit of Purgatory’, in Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio, ed. A. Mandelbaum, A. Oldcorn and C. Ross. Berkeley: 341–52. Lalli, R. (2017) ‘In limine. La lirica femminile del Cinquecento tra paratesto e stampa (1539–1600)’, La lirica in Italia dale origini al Rinascimento, ed. L. Geri and M. Grimaldi. Rome: 191–210. ––– (2018) ‘L’eterno scrivere. Vita e lettere di Carlo Gualteruzzi da Fano (1500–1577)’. PhD. dissertation, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Magalhães, A (2020) ‘L’immagine della marchesa: Bernardo Tasso e la raff igurazione di Vittoria Colonna nel “Libro secondo degli Amori”’, Studia Aurea 14: 537-78. Mammana, S. (2001) ‘Orsatto Giustinian, poeta coniugale’, in O. Giustinian, Rime, ed. S. Mammana. Florence. McHugh, S. (2013) ‘Rethinking Vittoria Colonna: gender and desire in the rime amorose’, The Italianist 33/3: 345–60. ––– (2020) ‘Devotion, desire, and masculinity in the spiritual verse of Angelo Grillo’, in Innovation: 145–65. ––– (2022) Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy. Amsterdam (forthcoming). Milite, L. (2000) Introduction to B. Rota, Rime, ed. L. Milite. Parma: vii-xxii. Moroni, O. (1984) Carlo Gualteruzzi (1500–1577) e i corrispondenti. Vatican City. Quondam, A. (1991) Il naso di Laura: lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del Classicismo. Modena. ––– (2020) Foreword to Innovation: xi–xxx. Parenti, G. (1985) Poëta Proteus alter: forma e storia di tre libri di Pontano. Florence. Pertile, L. (2006) ‘Un lutto di Pietro Bembo’, Letteratura italiana antica 7: 441–52. Piantoni, L. (2014) Introduction to Goselini 2014: 13–105.

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Rabitti, G. (1992) ‘Vittoria Colonna, Bembo e Firenze: Un caso di ricezione e qualche postilla’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 44: 127–55. ––– (2000) ‘Vittoria Colonna as role model for Cinquecento women poets’, in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. S. Wood. Cambridge: 478–97. Ratti, A. (1902) ‘Una lettera autografa della Morosina a Pietro Bembo’, GSLI 40: 335–42. Richardson, B. (2000) ‘Amore maritale: advice on love and marriage in the second half of the Cinquecento’, in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. L. Panizza. London: 194–208. Robin, D. (2007) Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses and the Counter Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy. Chicago. ––– (2016) ‘The lyric voices of Vittoria Colonna and the women of the Giolito anthologies, 1545–1559’, in Companion: 433–66. Roman, L. (2014). Introduction to Pontano 2014: vii–xxvii. Rosalba, G. (1895) ‘Un poeta coniugale del secolo XVI. Berardino Rota’, GSLI 26: 92–113. Sanson, H. (2016) ‘Vittoria Colonna and language’ in Companion: 195–233. Sapegno, M. S. (2003) ‘La costruzione di un Io lirico al femminile nella poesia di Vittoria Colonna’, Versants 46: 15–37. ––– (2016) ‘The Rime: a textual conundrum?’, in Companion: 140–94. Soranzo, M. (2012) ‘Poetry and society in Aragonese Naples: Giovanni Pontano’s elegies of married love’, in Marriage in Premodern Europe: Italy and Beyond, ed. J. Murray. Toronto: 279–305. Stella, C. (2019) ‘Il ruolo di Vittoria Colonna nella Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime e virtuosissime donne (1559)’, Italian Studies 74/3: 242–59. Targoff, R. (2018) Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York. Thérault, S. (1968) Un cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna châtelaine d’Ischia. Florence and Paris. Toscano, T. R. (1988) ‘Due “allievi” di Vittoria Colonna: Luigi Tansillo e Alfonso d’Avalos (con un sonetto inedito della marchesa di Pescara)’, Critica letteraria 16: 739–73. ––– (2004) L’enigma di Galeazzo di Tarsia. Naples. Travi, E. (1980) ‘Due nuove lettere della Morosina’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale 20: 177–81. Vecce, C. (2013) ‘Il “cantiere romano”’, in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, ed. G. Beltramini, D. Gasparotto and A. Tura. Venice: 276–83. West, R. (2012) ‘Diventare un aggettivo. La modulazione dell’autorità femminile nella poesia italiana del Novecento delle donne e sulle donne’, in Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies, ed. V. Cox and C. Ferrari. Bologna: 243–63.

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About the author Shannon McHugh is Assistant Professor of Italian and French at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is co-translator of Diodata Malvasia, Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and Their Miraculous Madonna (2015), coeditor of Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020), and author of Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy (forthcoming in 2022).

15. ‘She Showed the World a Beacon of Female Worth’: Vittoria Colonna in Arcadia* Tatiana Crivelli

Abstract The Accademia dell’Arcadia (founded 1690) deserves to play a leading role in any account of Vittoria Colonna’s posthumous influence. The author of the first ‘critical’ edition of Colonna’s verse, Ercole Visconti, was an Arcadian, as was Giovan Maria Crescimbeni, who presented Colonna’s work in his Istoria della volgar poesia as an ‘inexhaustible mine of the finest gold’. The many female poets of the Academy also recognised and paid tribute to Colonna’s inspiration. This chapter investigates Colonna’s role as literary model within the Academy, covering all the key phases, from the early eighteenth to the nineteenth century, and examining the ways in which gender inflected the practices and stylistic ideals of this powerful cultural institution. Keywords: Accademia dell’Arcadia, Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, literary academies, female poets, canon formation

It was her grief at that eternal and fateful separation from her Marquis Fernando of Pescara that dictated those queenly sonnets to the woman Michelangelo adored … We women are considered plagiarists, or, at best imitators, when we write epics, dramas, histories, scientific treatises, but the woman who sings of her love copies no one; she coins her ideas fresh from the mint and seals them with her own wax and imprint.1 * Translated by Virginia Cox. 1 ‘il dolore per la eterna ma fatale separazione dal suo marchese Fernando di Pescara, detta a l’adorata da Michelangelo i regali sonetti. … Plagiarie, o almeno imitatrici, siamo considerate quando scriviamo poemi, drammi, storie, trattati scientifici; ma la donna che canta il suo amore non copia nessuno; conia le idee nuove di zecca e le suggella con la propria cera ed impronta’. The

Cox, V. and S. McHugh (eds.), Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463723947_ch15

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On the pseudo-poetry of Arcadia and its (partial) right to existence Like ‘sparkling, many-coloured glass baubles’ that attract ‘barbarians’ accustomed to ‘piling themselves high with ornaments’—in just such terms does Benedetto Croce definitively characterize the Baroque poetic excesses of the irrational Italy of the Counter-Reformation. These trinkets shimmer away, illusory and bereft of any true value, representing the final stage of a trajectory that has ‘in one continuous line gone from troubadour lyric and Petrarchism to the showy poetry of Marino and the Baroque’.2 Within this critical perspective, it is precisely by virtue of its strenuous resistance to the dazzling, empty glitter of seventeenth-century literature that the eighteenth-century Accademia dell’Arcadia deserves such prominence. It has the merit of promoting an ‘ordered’ and ‘limpid’ model of literature, inspired by the principles of Cartesian rationality that had already taken root in the rest of Europe. Although Croce had little time for the aesthetic ideals of either the supporters of Arcadia or its detractors, he nonetheless helped to ensure that eighteenth-century Arcadian literature and Baroque literature would be seen as antithetical: a position that continues to condition our vision of both movements right down to the present day. At last, however, ‘post-Tridentine’ Italian literary production is now finally beginning to be examined afresh. In the last decade or so, scholars have begun to revisit the poetry of the late Cinquecento and early Seicento, with different notions of causality; and the notion of a radical discontinuity between literary epochs is beginning to be replaced with something more nuanced.3 At the same time, studies on the writings of Italian female poets in the sixteenth century are revising our understanding of the ways in which this innovative Cinquecento tradition served as a model for successive generations of writers. In parallel with these developments, new research on the literature of the female poets of the Arcadia movement is revealing the power and range of women’s writing within the Arcadian Academy, and in this way is helping us to modify our whole vision of the pre-Unification literary canon in Italy. The time is propitious for an attempt to connect these epigraph to this chapter is taken from an article by the poet and translator Teresa Di Dominicis Venuti (1842–1928), in the journal La Chiosa, 25 January 1923: 3. My thanks to Valeria Iaconis for sharing this trouvaille with me. An Italian-language version of this chapter was published as Crivelli 2019. I am grateful to the Accademia dell’Arcadia for agreeing to the publication of this English version. 2 Croce 1949: 4–5. 3 See Virginia Cox’s introduction to this volume, 22–25.

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two developments together: on the one hand, the questioning of continuities and discontinuities within the Italian literary tradition between the later sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries; on the other, the attempt fully to integrate women’s writings within literary historiography. An attempt of this kind could not find a more appropriate starting-point than the reflections of the first Custodian of the Accademia dell’Arcadia, Giovan Maria Crescimbeni, who was responsible both for the project of reconnecting with the ideals of the Cinquecento lyric tradition, through the new poetics of Arcadia, and also for the active promotion of women’s writing within the Academy. In order to grasp the import of Crescimbeni’s initiative on this dual front, however, it will be necessary first to dispel an error of perspective, which dictates that these two cultural proposals are mutually contradictory and cannot coexist. As was stated at the outset, under the fundamental influence of Benedetto Croce, Italian literary historiography has tended to see eighteenth-century Arcadian poetry as reflecting the traits of the century of Enlightenment rationalism. These traits, whether they are seen positively (as a poetic program informed by ideals of clarity, rigour and simplicity), or negatively (as something that risks devolving into an intellectualistic mode remote from ‘true poetry’), are posited as antithetical to the character of women’s writing, as identified within that same Crocean tradition. For Croce, who set in stone and gave a new and enduring life to what was already an established commonplace within Italian cultural history, literature produced by women is inextricably connected with the immanent plane of emotional experience, of the promptings of the senses, and of autobiographical confessionalism. As such, it is destined to remain poetically inchoate. 4 So, for Croce, you cannot have it both ways: either you are intent on reviving the good taste and fine equilibrium of pre-Baroque aesthetic harmony, in conjunction with a new ideal of Cartesian rigour; or else, you are intent on wasting your energies in promoting the sentimental, instinctive poetry of women. Given this stark dichotomy, it is difficult for any follower of Croce to take seriously those ‘marchionesses and countesses who played their harps and fingered their spinets and sang their little arias and flirted with chevaliers and abbés’ in the world of Arcadia, and who, ‘at a close look, appear affected 4 Writing of Ada Negri, Croce indicates unfinishedness of form as a ‘particularly feminine’ defect. The great earthly passions, whether social or erotic, prevent ‘contemplative absorption’, and, since women are especially prone to these passions, the best that even those gifted with strong feelings can hope to achieve is ‘flashes of poetry, traces, hints, motifs, but never finished poems’ (lampi poetici, impronte, tracce, motivi; e non poesie compiute). Croce 1943: 351.

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and a mite foolish’.5 As a philosopher, Croce may even cut some slack to the philosophically inflected ‘pseudo-poetry’ of Arcadia, judging it a form of literary production in keeping with the spirit of the age, but the only female members of the Arcadian Academy who deserve any kind of credit are those few who may be ranked as ‘mothers and educators of future Italian patriots’.6 Over time, Croce’s critical reading has determined an entrenched model of reception that colours our entire image of Arcadia as a cultural space, generating readings that tend to undervalue, if not completely to discredit, the line represented by Crescimbeni. Long dismissed as someone intent on throwing open the doors of the Academy to sonnet-mongers and women, Crescimbeni is only now beginning to be seriously researched and revalued.7 Before this recent trend, serious attention had been concentrated, rather, on (to quote Croce again) ‘the most chaste and exquisitely hellenic Opico Erimanteo, which is to say Gian Vincenzo Gravina’.8 Crowned by an atemporal halo on the model of Homer or Dante, the Arcadian culture of Gravina cannot be identified with a poetic production geared towards current affairs or to the new discoveries and impulses of the age in which it was produced. That kind of production is dismissed, in Croce’s perspective as ‘unpoetic’, the stuff of compilations: the product of that eighteenth century that in Italy failed to produce ‘great philosophers or great poetry’.9 Nor can Gravina’s output be confused with the flashy brilliance of the period’s paste jewels, such as the Petrarchizing verses composed by ‘dainty powdered ladies with artfully distributed beauty spots on their charming little faces’.10 From this perspective, then, there is one model of Arcadia—Crescimbeni’s Arcadia—that, far from bringing about the renovation of cultural forms it announced, remained trapped instead within that deplorable and barbarian ‘line of continuity’ referred to above. Yet it is precisely along this line of continuity (and at the intersection of various vectors of gender and genre) that we find the female-authored sonnet of Petrarchist heritage that is such 5 Croce 1949: 3. 6 Croce 1949: 3. 7 See, for example, Campanello et al. (eds.) 2019, collecting the proceedings of an international conference held by the Accademia dell’Arcadia in June 2018. 8 Croce 1949: 7. Gravina himself cites, as the reason for his disagreement with Crescimbeni and the consequent schism within Arcadia in 1711, the impossibility of purging the Academy’s sittings of ‘pastoral chatter and little sonnets and canzoni’ in favour of ‘some more solid and useful application’, and also of taking lyric discourse beyond Petrarchan imitation (Gravina 1973a: 472). 9 Croce 1949: 9. 10 Croce 1949: 2.

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a dominant feature of the literary production of the women of the Arcadia movement under discussion here.11 The poetry of these Arcadian ‘shepherdesses’ (as female members of the Academy were called), represents a very interesting example of the complex relationship between women’s writing and literary tradition in the modern era: a relationship characterized by the delicate balance between the impulse to elaborate an autonomous voice and the need for an authorizing precedent of some kind. In this respect, Vittoria Colonna represents an object of particular attention right from the founding moment of the Arcadian movement, in 1698; and the history of her presence within Arcadia, to which this essay intends to offer an initial contribution, constitutes an important and unexplored chapter within the history both of Colonna’s reception and of the Arcadian movement itself. In keeping with Virginia Cox’s auguries for Colonna in the introductory essay to this volume, and in the hope that, like Colonna herself, the Arcadian movement will increasingly come to be seen as an act of innovation, and not simply imitation, let us now begin this inquiry by following the traces of Colonna’s presence within the founding writings of Arcadia, those of Crescimbeni.

Vittoria Colonna in Crescimbeni’s Istoria della volgar poesia An ‘inexhaustible mine of the finest gold and the most precious gems’: thus, in his fundamental Istoria della volgar poesia does Alfesibeo Cario (Crescimbeni under his Arcadian pseudonym) present Vittoria Colonna’s work to modernity.12 Inserted in the list of the hundred ‘best known and respected Poets’ of the past, around which Crescimbeni’s poetic survey is structured from the first edition, of 1698, Colonna finds her place within the pages of the History among those who were the ‘originators, or heads, of the 11 Where the sonnet is concerned, a significant passage is the following, from Gravina, referring to the new academic society: ‘It does not focus on the effort of weaving wretched little sonnets: a type of composition which, in the world of poetry, serves as a figure for the Procrustean bed, which cut off men’s legs when they extended beyond the end of it, or stretched limbs with ropes when they did not fit its length, reducing all men to the same form. We see exactly the same happening to whatever poor sentiment finds itself condemned to enter into a sonnet, because in order to find expression in the course of fourteen lines, it must remain either mutilated or overstretched. Even in Petrarch it is rare to find a sonnet in which there are not either too few words or too many’ (Gravina 1973b: 488). 12 Crescimbeni 1714: 120. Subsequently references will be to this edition, in which the biographical profile (101–2) reproduces without variations that printed in the princeps (Crescimbeni 1698), but with the addition of important Annotazioni.

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schools or manners or styles of poetry that have flourished so far in history’ (introduttori, o capi delle scuole, o delle maniere, o stili praticati finora). As Alfesibeo makes clear in his Introduction, the poetic corpus of the Istoria has been selected balancing his own preferences against the critical opinions of ‘the most sage judges of literature’.13 In the case of Vittoria Colonna, however, as we can see from the Annotazioni that Crescimbeni added to her profile in the second edition, his judgement is an original and innovative one.14 Crescimbeni demonstrates a knowledge of the commentary on Colonna’s verse that Rinaldo Corso prepared in 1542, only four years after the publication of the first printed edition appeared, in Parma (seemingly the first instance of an extended commentary on the work of a living poet to appear in print).15 Crescimbeni also cites the sixteenth-century eulogies of Colonna by Luca Contile and Ludovico Ariosto, celebrating her innate wisdom, in the first case, and her superiority to all other female poets, in the other.16 Above all, though, Crescimbeni publishes in his anthology Colonna’s sonnet, ‘Ahi, quanto fu al mio Sol contrario il fato’ (Oh, how contrary fate was to my sun!; sonnet A1: 71 in Alan Bullock’s edition): a poem addressed by Vittoria Colonna to Pietro Bembo, lamenting the fact that Bembo has not written verse in praise of Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos, the deceased husband to whose memorialization Colonna’s love poetry is dedicated.17 13 ‘de’ più savi Letterati’. Crescimbeni 1714, Introduzione; par. I (unnumbered). Crescimbeni lists the names of the literary experts who have assisted in the completion of the work at paragraph XIII (unnumbered). 14 Crescimbeni 1714: 120–1 (book II, par. XXIII: Vittoria Colonna). Crescimbeni’s annotations in the 1714 edition take account of materials collected after 1698 and already published in his various Commentaries on his own work, which appeared between 1702 and 1711. Crescimbeni’s 1714 discussion of Colonna shows some influence from Ludovico Antonio Muratori’s Della perfetta poesia italiana (Muratori 1706: 336), but Muratori’s work was influenced in turn by Crescimbeni’s choice of exemplification in his original entry on Colonna in Crescimbeni 1698. On the importance of Crescimbeni’s work for Muratori, see Mazzini 2013. 15 The first part of Corso’s commentary, devoted to Colonna’s religious poetry, came out in 1542, while the complete commentary, embracing also her love poetry, was printed by Ruscelli in his edition of Tutte le rime (Colonna 1558). For discussion, see the chapter in this volume by Humberto González Chávez. Prior to Corso, a briefer commentary or lettura of a single sonnet by Laodomia Forteguerri is found in Piccolomini 1541. 16 Contile exalts Colonna’s wisdom in a letter to Count Ettore di Carpegna (Rome, 9 August 1541), where he compares her to the ‘Queen of Sheba, full of reverence and learning, that seems infused in her … rather than acquired by means of art’ (Regina Sabba, piena di riverenza e di dottrina, più tosto infusa … che con arte acquistata) (Contile 1564: I.19v–20r). Ariosto’s eulogy of Colonna is found in the final, 1532, edition of the Orlando furioso (Ariosto 2016: 1189–91 (OF: 37.15–21)). 17 Colonna 1982: 38; see also 503 for the context of first publication.

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Thus Crescimbeni selects as his prime example of Colonna’s art a sonnet that was among the very first of her poems to appear in print, at the end of the 1535 edition of Bembo’s Rime, and one whose fortunes in print may be considered symptomatic of the fate of Colonna’s entire literary production. The last appearance in print of this sonnet was in the edition of Colonna’s Rime published in 1560, and, down to the point when it was put back in circulation in this exemplary manner in Crescimbeni’s History, it may be found only within the print tradition of Bembo’s verse. It does not figure, for example, in the celebrated anthology Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime e virtuosissime donne, printed in Lucca in 1559 and edited by Lodovico Domenichi, nor in the careful reprise of this classic anthology of women’s verse, Cinquanta illustri poetesse, which appeared in Naples in 1695.18 Crescimbeni’s choice is thus doubly interesting. After a century and a half of invisibility within the print record, not only does he resurrect Colonna as one of the founding voices of the tradition of Italian poetry (the ‘originators, or heads, of the schools or manners or styles of poetry’), but he also chooses to exemplify her production not by citing one of Colonna’s religious verses, as might have been expected given her early reception patterns.19 Rather, he selects a powerfully metacritical text, which underlines the loftiness of poetry as a practice, and a poem that enters into dialogue with the ultimate authority of the sixteenth-century Petrarchist tradition, Pietro Bembo. Bembo replied to the poem with the sonnet ‘Cingi le costei tempie de l’amato’ (Crown her temples with that beloved plant).20 We will return to this discussion later, towards the end of this essay, to consider the lasting implications of Crescimbeni’s presentation of Colonna. For the moment, it will suffice to underline that the profile of Colonna as poet that we find in the 1714 version of the History may be regarded as, at the same time, retrospective, innovative, and programmatic; and that it constitutes the first, self-conscious positioning of Vittoria Colonna’s work within the Italian literary tradition of the modern era. Crescimbeni is not interested simply in recuperating Colonna as a single author; his interest in her is motivated by a broader and, precisely, programmatic impulse of cultural renewal, which inextricably knits together a sense of the exemplarity of the form of the Petrarchan sonnet and an openness to women’s

18 The poem’s final anthology appearance is in a collection of 1558 edited by Girolamo Ruscelli. See Robin 2016: 452. 19 For an overview of the publication history of Colonna’s verse, see Crivelli 2016. 20 For a bilingual edition of Colonna’s sonnet and Bembo’s response, see Cox (ed.) 2013: 268–70.

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participation in poetic composition.21 It is precisely on this intriguing nexus that I would like to focus now, looking both at the historical-critical profile Crescimbeni gives us of Colonna in his Istoria, of which I propose to offer a close reading through the optic of gender, and at the connections between that profile and the successive collections of Rime degli Arcadi, with special reference to the writings by women contained in these collections.22

The ‘place’ of Colonna As is well known, the first nine volumes of the Rime degli Arcadi, published between 1716 and 1722, represent the most regular phase of this great editorial enterprise, and they appeared under the aegis of Crescimbeni’s custodianship. Less well known, and less often recalled, is the fact that a quarter of the total number of appearances by female Arcadian poets in the Academy’s publications is concentrated in this period.23 This is a striking fact, and not only in quantitative terms. The admission of women to the Academy in considerable numbers, and the dissemination of their work through the Rime degli Arcadi were, in fact, the result of a well-defined sociocultural policy, as I have argued elsewhere.24 What interests me here is to show that a similar logic underlies—in different ways—Crescimbeni’s strategy of resignifying Vittoria Colonna’s writing in his History and the calls in Arcadian circles for a renewal of the literary good taste of the sixteenth century. To follow through this complex web of cultural motivations, it is useful first to note the historical parallels between the innovative editorial project of the Rime degli Arcadi and the legendary sequence of anthologies brought out by Gabriele Giolito and associated publishers between 1545 and 1560.25 In addition to signif icant structural analogies, Giolito’s great editorial enterprise shares various innovatory impulses with that of the Arcadian Academy, above all that of giving space to unpublished voices within the 21 Regarding the sonnet form, Crescimbeni states that, ‘I have made my choice of these samples among Sonnets, as the most noble form of Tuscan Lyric, and also on account of their brevity’. Crescimbeni 1714: Introduzione; par. V (unnumbered). 22 For a complete list of the male and female authors published, see Doglio and Pastore Stocchi 2013. Baragetti 2012 is also useful. 23 The relative percentage for male poets is 8 per cent, for the same period. These figures come from the fundamental study of Quondam 1973: 412–13, integrated with further material from Crivelli 2014: 97–8. 24 Crivelli 2014. 25 On this important editorial initiative, see, at least, Govi 2010; Coppens and Nuovo 2005.

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poetic culture of their respective eras, among them those of women.26 It is sufficient here to recall that, in the first true printed series of volumes of Italian poetry, writings by more than f ifty female poets found their place, collected together with writings by more than three hundred of their male peers. Especially important for this was the 1559 anthology edited by Lodovico Domenichi for the publishing house of Busdraghi in Lucca, where the majority of these women are found.27 Just as when he proposes his own, individual anthology in his History, so also when he drives forward the project of the printed collections of the Rime degli Arcadi, Crescimbeni’s initiatives retain a faint imprint of this prior, sixteenth-century work of anthologization. Both are cultural projects intended to highlight the value of a particular, new model of poetic creation, rooted in Petrarch.28 Both operate a broad-based selection policy, which embraces also poetry by women.29

26 The fundamental series of volumes published by Giolito, nine in total, like the Arcadian volumes we are discussing, is mentioned explicitly right from the introduction to Crescimbeni’s Istoria. Crescimbeni recalls the ‘Raccolta di rime di diversi eccellentissimi autori del XVI secolo’, published in various books, and he underlines that each of these books ‘is distinct in itself and there are various editions of each’ (Crescimbeni 1714: Introduzione, par. XIV). The same applies to the Rime degli Arcadi. Also interesting is Crescimbeni’s insistence on the way in which the compositions published in the Arcadian anthologies were selected. Once again, this is quite compatible with the methods of the editors of the Giolito anthologies, Anton Francesco Doni and Lodovico Domenichi, who requested texts directly from their authors. Similarly, in the Rime degli Arcadi, we find only authorially sourced texts, chosen among the autograph poems placed at the disposition of the Arcadian Academy. Other analogies may also be identified—for example, in the way in which the Arcadian anthologies highlight the ‘exquisite manner’, the ‘novelty’ and the ‘added charm’ with which the Academy cultivates belles lettres, corresponding with Domenichi’s statement, in presenting the f irst tome of the anthology to the dedicatee (Diego de Hurtado Mendoza), that this was a work in which he could see collected ‘various verses composed by the rarest authors of our language’ (1, 7), which would surely delight him for ‘the diversity of their concepts and the variety of their style’ (8). Finally, we might recall the attention reserved in these volumes for the political and social history of the time (as is underlined in the dedicatory letter of the first tome of the Rime degli Arcadi, to Francesco Maria Ruspoli, Prince of Cerveteri). This obviously implies the presence of much occasional verse. In this connection, we might recall that the f irst Giolito volume contains three sonnets by Vittoria Colonna, of which one is religious in subject matter, and two encomiastic (compositions, respectively, for the deaths of Cardinals Gasparo Contarini and Pompeo Colonna). The poems, found in Rime 1545, 267–8, are ‘Veggio d’alga e di fango omai sì carca’; ‘Non prima, et da lontan picciola fronde’; and ‘Tanti lumi, che già questa fosca ombra’ (respectively S1: 116, E: 19, and E: 8 in Colonna 1982). 27 See on this anthology, and Colonna’s place in it, Robin 2016, 455–62 and Stella 2019. 28 The stated aim of the movement is ‘the complete resurgence of good taste within literary culture, which so greatly deteriorated in the past Century’ (Rime degli Arcadi 1716: I.1 unnumbered). 29 ‘And, because the intention of the collection is to involve all members of the Academy, and to give them the chance not merely to make corrections and additions to existing compositions,

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If this general drive towards cultural and poetic renewal is the principal objective of the nine tomes of Rime degli Arcadi edited by Crescimbeni, the figure of Vittoria Colonna may be read as incarnating the aims of this first phase of the Arcadian movement. The way in which she is presented within Crescimbeni’s History offers confirmation of this. It begins: Io non credo, che la barbarie dell’antecedente secolo avesse maggior colpo, e più sensibile di quello, che una valorosa Donna le diede, nella quale non solamente le Muse, ma le Scienze tutte parve, che il Cielo trasfondesse, e siccome in proporzionato, e sicuro luogo ponesse in serbo i suoi più singolari tesori.30 I do not believe that the barbarousness of the preceding century ever received a greater or more devastating blow than at the hands of a valorous Lady, in whom it appeared that Heaven had infused not merely all the Muses but all the Sciences also, as if it wished to conserve all its most singular treasures in one single apt and secure place.

Through the characteristics with which she is credited here, Vittoria Colonna is presented as a symbolic agent of that process of ‘renewal’ which takes the form of elaborating alternatives to the ‘barbarousness’ of the previous century, and which constitutes the primary aim of the Arcadian movement. Vittoria Colonna becomes literally a place (‘in one single apt and secure place’). And not just any place: we are speaking of a Colonna-Arcadia, in which—not only through her poetry, but also in what she signifies as a f igure and a woman—we see embodied those same qualities that the new Academy sought to represent. In Crescimbeni’s presentation, Vittoria Colonna is a ‘valorous’ connoisseur of ‘the Muses’ and ‘all the Sciences’, but she also possesses a wisdom that ‘it seemed that Heaven had infused in her’ (a phrase reminiscent of Luca Contile’s encomium, mentioned above). Colonna is an ‘apt and secure place’ of safekeeping for the ‘most singular treasures’ of Heaven; she is ‘miraculous’, an exceptional woman, both in regard to her nobility of birth and her external and internal beauty. Extraordinary as a woman, she is unique as an artist. Her ‘Tuscan poetry’, her familiarity with ‘the lyric Muses’ ‘elevates’ her both in terms of style but also to contribute new compositions, a letter was sent round to all Arcadian gatherings throughout Italy in the past months’ (Rime degli Arcadi 1716: I.16 unnumbered). 30 This and all the following quotations are taken from the profile of Vittoria Colonna published in Crescimbeni 1714: 119–20 (book II, par. XXIII: Vittoria Colonna) .

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and of subject-matter (her poetic ‘facility’ and ‘learning’)—so much so that she attains a kind of gender amplificatio: the ‘divine’ poetess leaves behind her the throng of authoresses possessed of solely feminine attributes, ‘glorying’ instead in her capacity to ‘keep pace with the greatest [male] followers’ of Petrarch. The core of Crescimbeni’s description of Colonna’s poetry is in fact completely structured around two semantic f ields whose traditional gender connotations are antithetical: the feminine language of fertility, on the one hand, and the masculine language of hunting and discovery, on the other. This is not a case, however, of the well-known encomiastic mechanism of attributing ‘virile’ qualities to women: the most common praise topos within literary histories for women who excel intellectually. In this case, by contrast, Colonna is seamlessly positioned within both genders. Within the feminine cavity of her textual ‘mine’, whose vein of fertility is described as ‘inexhaustible’, she is described as having ‘scattered and concealed seeds’, in such a way that her canzoniere becomes a place that invites us to penetrate it to extract materials of great value (‘of the f inest gold and most precious gems’). In Crescimbeni’s account, the f irst ‘discovery of this treasure’ was due to the work of a mature Rinaldo Corso, portrayed in the staid guise of the ‘most learned Bishop of Strongoli’, even if Crescimbeni was well aware, having stated it in the introduction to his work—this ‘discovery’ was, in reality, that of a lively young neophyte of literary studies (Corso was eighteen when the f irst volume of his commentary was published). It is not enough, moreover, that Colonna should have the characteristics of the unum vas (sole vessel), which unites within it masculine and feminine, loftiness of content and beauty of form; we also see her represented here as an ambiguous creature, placed on the conf ines between death and life: ‘She lived until 1546 but died long before that time in spirit’. Colonna’s widowhood is presented here in the guise of an existential crossroads (she lives, but ‘desires nothing but death’), but this is also the moment when the superimposition between the woman and her writing becomes more explicit. Her widowed life, ‘among continuous sighs and sorrows’, is, literally, ‘revealed’ in her verses: love poems that accord consummately with the state of one who ‘could never forget what was f itting for a Lady of perfect chastity, even after the death of that man whom the Heavens had chosen as her companion’. The divine ‘place’ that is Colonna emerges from an inextricable mingling of her life and works, and of certain, fundamental elements of Crescimbeni’s canon. We see just the same dynamic in his construction of the place

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of Arcadia. In both cases, we find a poetic project, of a renewal of style, that finds expression through the form of Cinquecento Petrarchist lyric, amorous in subject matter and Tuscan in its language. It is also, however, a cultural project, in as much as it identifies a productive and potentially inexhaustible vein of knowledge—knowledge that is neither pedantic nor erudition for its own sake, but a wisdom deriving from some ‘natural’, harmonious order, which still needs in part to be brought to light for its true value to be known. More than this, Crescimbeni proposes to us through the model of Colonna an atemporal ethical model of a marital relationship, characterized by a full and satisfying social engagement between the sexes, and presided over by loyalty, chastity, and a love tension that lends itself to being sublimated into poetry. Finally, for Crescimbeni, Colonna represents a full harmonization of natural feminine instinct and masculine intellectual rigor. Within the place that is Colonna-Arcadia, the form of the Petrarchist sonnet—which has at its heart, precisely, a type of amorous relationship between individuals defined by a certain metaphysical and spiritual tension, and structured around the interaction between masculine and feminine—finds a renewed and renovated expression, a treasure yet to be discovered. In this new place, verses may be discovered which, though formally fully in line with the original, Petrarchan model, in fact transform that model: the verses of a female poet who, using the language of Petrarch’s love for Laura, at the same time becomes Laura, as well as Petrarch, as she narrates her biographical self.31 Within Crescimbeni’s profile of Colonna, we can see, revived, the gender ambiguity and the graphic vividness of Michelangelo’s portrait of the same figure: ‘Un uomo in una donna, anzi uno dio, / per la sua bocca parla’ (A man within a woman, or rather a god / speaks through her mouth).32 And this productive union of masculine and feminine, of ancient form and naturalness of inspiration, of Petrarchan language and virtuoso Lauran reinterpretation of that language, precisely hits the mark of Crescimbeni’s program for the renovation of poetry. These considerations can help us grasp the underlying logic of the Academy’s genre and gender preferences, as we examine its concrete literary, cultural and social practice.

31 These observations develop an interesting hypothesis advanced in Cox 2006, 117–50. The same author, particularly in Cox 2012, discusses the mechanism, confirmed by the case under examination here, whereby issues of gender serve to articulate epochal changes in the history of Italian literature. 32 Buonarroti 2016: 219 (madrigal L68 [=235], lines 1–2).

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The ‘place’ of Arcadia The hypothesis set out here, that Vittoria Colonna may be read as an effective synecdoche for the Arcadia movement under Crescimbeni, needs to be tested further through a brief and purely indicative analysis of the poetic writings of the Arcadian pastorelle—its shepherdess-poets—and their relationship to Colonna’s poetry. Among the female authors who figure most frequently in the first nine tomes of the Rime degli Arcadi, and who may be seen in many respects to be among the most representative female Arcadian poets, are three pastorelle whose work allows us to integrate within this discussion another work of Crescimbeni’s, L’Arcadia. In Book IV of this work, in which Crescimbeni narrates the history of the Academy, ‘the principal part is taken up by the talent and spirit of many of the most distinguished Ladies of Italy’.33 Aglaura, Elettra and Fidalma—that is, Faustina Maratti Zappi (c. 1679–1745), Prudenza Gabrielli Capizucchi (1654–1709) and Petronilla Paolini Massimi (1663–1726), three poets who figure in the Rime with around thirty compositions each—appear as protagonists in a key scene that narrates women’s emancipation within the first phase of the Arcadian movement. In the course of the ‘Olympic games’—poetic competitions organised by the Academy—these three women emblematically choose to set in motion the most ambitious game among those that have been proposed, up to this point reserved for men. Aglaura assumes the role of the Oracle, while Fidalma and Elettra supply, respectively, the first and the second philosophical-rhetorical interpretation of the mysterious response (‘Crystal’) which they receive in reply to their quintessentially Petrarchan-Colonnesque question, ‘whether Love is necessary to perfect the human mind?’34 In the course of his representation of this episode, Alfesibeo-Crescimbeni lays great emphasis on its emancipatory significance from a gender point of view, giving the following words, for example, to Fidalma: ‘it should not be the case that our glory in these Olympic games should depend on Men, since we can acquire it for ourselves. Enough, enough … ’35 In a similar vein, the narrator remarks that the female poets elaborated their responses ‘without the least apprehension of a trial that often sets the Intellects of 33 ‘la principal parte si fa dal talento, e dallo spirito di molte delle più riguardevoli Dame d’Italia’. Crescimbeni 1708: 3. The quotation comes from the dedicatory letter, to ‘Madama Ondedei Albani, Sister-in-Law of His Holiness Pope Clement XI’. 34 Crescimbeni 1708: 146–56 (Prosa V). 35 ‘Non vuole il dovere, che la nostra gloria ne’ giuochi olimpici abbia a dipender dagli Uomini, allorché ne la possiamo acquistar per noi stesse. Non più, non più … ’ Crescimbeni 1708: 3.

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the most learned Men in a sweat’.36 Claiming for themselves, in this way, the prerogative often considered masculine par excellence, that of abstract, systematic thought, just like Crescimbeni’s Colonna, the female poets of Arcadia actively appropriate for themselves, within the fiction of the narrative and in the reality of their poetic practice, a new and symbolically important space, where they can act as protagonists. Like Crescimbeni’s Colonna, they too transform themselves into oracle-women, both masculine and feminine, ambiguous and wise as Sibyls; they are both Petrarch and Laura, embodying both the rational force of intellect and the uncorrupted force of Nature. The same kind of ideal trajectory seems to inform many of these women’s writings. Glancing through the collections of the Arcadian Rime, one is struck, for example, by the way in which Fidalma will juxtapose compositions devoted to praising the womanly virtues of the Virgin Mary with verses inciting women to open rebellion against the barriers of traditional gender roles, such as her famous ‘Sdegna Clorinda a i femminili uffici / chinar la destra’ (Clorinda disdains to abase her right hand by putting it to feminine labours).37 No less interesting, in this perspective, is the alternation between a masculine and a feminine lyric ‘I’ within Elettra’s literary production, nor the recollection of the virile fortitude of the exemplary women of antiquity alongside the valorization of the theme of maternity in Aglauro’s most famous sonnets. In their texts, as in Colonna’s, the masculine intellectualistic terrain of the Petrarchan lyric code is sown with a feminine seed that bears new fruit, just as within Arcadian literary sociability, the presence of women introduced a new element into a traditionally male environment. The poetry of Vittoria Colonna constitutes a solid reference point in all this, which goes far beyond any merely stylistic dimension, serving as touchstone for an experiential affinity that crosses the centuries. We see this, once again, in the verse of the Arcadian shepherdess-poets, and strikingly so in the extraordinary sonnet that Elettra composes on the death of her husband. In this poem, not only does Elettra cite her sixteenth-century model quite explicitly (‘In this Son[net], “the immortal Lady” signifies Vittoria Colonna, who composed various verses on the death of her husband’),38 but she also represents, in the quartine—something still rarer—a glimpse of female 36 ‘senza paventar punto d’un cimento, che sovente a’ più dotti Uomini ha fatto sudar l’Ingegno’. Crescimbeni 1708: 146. 37 A bilingual edition of the poem may be found in Allen, Jewell and Kittel (eds.) 1986: 26–7. 38 ‘In questo Son[etto] per la ‘Donna immortale’ s’intende Vittoria Colonna, che compose varie Rime in morte del Marito’. Rime degli Arcadi 1716: III.115. The sonnet is cited from this edition.

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reading, caught within the daily reality of a domestic interior, though also with an exemplary dimension: Talor di mia magion la più romita parte mi scielgo; ivi pensosa, e sola, misuro il mio dolor, che a me m’invola, coll’altrui duolo, e la già stanca vita. L’alto sentier, che col suo stil m’addita Donna immortale, in parte il cor consola; ma invan per le chiar’orme indi sen vola il mio pensier, ch’a seguir lei m’invita. Ella l’estinto suo bel Sole a morte tolse col canto; e alle future genti il dipinse qual visse, eccelso, e forte; ma non fia già, che in rime aspre, e dolenti io nuova vita al mio Signore apporte: e mostri i pregi suoi, che morte ha spenti. Sometimes I choose the most remote quarters of my home; and there, pensive and alone, I measure my sorrow, which is stealing me from myself with another’s pain, and my already weary life. The lofty path that an immortal Lady marks out for me with her pen, in part consoles my heart; but in vain does my thought, which invites me to follow her, fly after her famous steps. She rescued her extinct lovely Sun from death with her song; and to the people of the future, she painted him as he was living, sublime and brave; but it cannot be that I, in my harsh, doleful verses, will bring my Lord to new life and show his fine virtues, which death has extinguished.

Vittoria’s staff The importance of Vittoria Colonna’s poetry and the exemplary role that her figure assumed within the early phase of the Arcadian movement were not confined to that moment alone. On the contrary, they were taken up by the pastorelle of successive generations, for whom they served to found a poetic genealogy of reference. Thus, at the close of the eighteenth century, we find Diodata Saluzzo (1774–1840) placing herself emblematically as the heir to a whole tradition of female Arcadian writing, staging the image of a pastoral staff, a bacolo, which has been transmitted to her from the earliest days of the Arcadia movement by Faustina Maratti Zappi, and which serves as a

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living witness to those days: ‘But envy me, o nymphs! Once this staff / was Aglauro’s, lovely Aglauro / who sounded Italic songs to the heavens. / Her treasure it was that made me a shepherdess; / I, a shepherdess, had it from her … ’39 In the poetry of the Arcadian shepherdesses, the complexity and significance of connections with the female models of the past produced interesting fruits, precisely because, as I have argued here, these connections were already programmatically written in to the opening phase of the Arcadian movement. This was the origin of the ‘extraordinary and intense valorization of the preceding female poetic tradition’ that later went on to characterise the whole of the Italian eighteenth century. 40 It has not been emphasised sufficiently that the first moment of Arcadia gave birth not only to the inclusive volumes of the Rime degli Arcadi, but also the first modern anthologies dedicated exclusively to the poetic writings of women. The first of these is that of Giovanni Battista Recanati (or Teleste Ciparissiano, to give him his Arcadian name), who in 1716 collected the verses of his female contemporaries, in a conscious imitation of his sixteenth-century predecessors, especially Domenichi.41 Later, we see an anthology that integrates the sixteenth-century poets collected by Domenichi with the eighteenth-century figures collected by Recanati (as well as other female poets not included in their anthologies), in what is the first history of women’s writing to be written by a woman: Luisa Bergalli, or ‘inter Arcades, Irminda’.42 In this fundamental 39 ‘Ma invidiatemi, o Ninfe! Un dì d’Aglauro / questo bacolo fu, d’Aglauro vaga, / ch’itali carmi fe’ suonare a l’etra. / Pastorella me fece il suo tesauro; / io pastorella l’ebbi’. Saluzzo 1802: I.14, lines 9–11. 40 Chemello and Ricaldone 2000: 6. 41 Recanati (ed.) 1716: 3v: ‘Others have earlier published Rime di Virtuose Donne, among them Messer Lodovico Domenichi, whose anthology was published in Lucca in 1559 and then again in Naples in 1695, by Bulifon, with the title of Rime di Cinquanta Illustri Poetesse’. In a way that is very different from the fruitful fusion of female and male poetic models that we f ind in Crescimbeni’s collections, Recanati defines his female authors through an encomium of their femininity, on the one hand, while, on the other, he inscribes their poetry under the banner of intellectual virility. Thus, we hear, on one side, the editor underlining the modesty of his poets, ‘from many of whom I could hardly manage to extract a sample of their verse, even (so as to speak) by main force’, while, on the other side, he congratulates ‘these most learned Poetesses, whose Compositions are anything but feminine’ (Recanati (ed.) 1716: 3r). 42 Bergalli (ed.) 1726. In the prefatory text ‘To the Reader’ (unnumbered), the editor explains: ‘As is well known, there have only been two Collections of Female Poets, one of the Old Poets, in the number of fifty, put together by the good Domenichi; the other of Moderns, to the number of thirty-five, published by our most Erudite Teleste Ciparissiano. Seeing that there was room for a third, which would unite the Authoresses of the first era and the second, while at the same time including many other famous poets, or poets worthy of fame, who have through their ill fortune remained almost unknown to the Republic of Letters, a desire came to me to undertake this honourable labour. Two motives appeal to me in this: that I open a path for those lesser

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work, Irminda’s editorial apparatus does not emphasize the opposition between her authors’ virtues and the virility of their poetry; rather, she places the entire enterprise under the aegis of gender equality, reminding her readers of the ‘vecchia costumanza, per la quale a tutt’altro, che agli studj vengono le donne applicate’ (established custom, whereby women apply themselves to anything else except literary studies), and demanding that their work be re-evaluated not as a gallant courtesy (‘per solo tratto di gentilezza’), but on account of their objective worth. 43 In her profile of Vittoria Colonna, Bergalli underlines the feminine components of her figure as woman and as poet, emphasizing their dignity. Recalling Vittoria’s great love for Ferrante, Bergalli specifies that her love was ‘reciprocated as her merit deserved’, and she identifies Colonna’s greatest originality as lying ‘in her treatment of tender affects’. 44 Coherently with this approach, Bergalli includes a corpus of 26 poems by Colonna in her anthology, between sonnets and canzoni, with their thematic emphasis often falling on the specificity of the author’s womanly role. Among the poems that appears here, for example, is the sonnet ‘Qual digiuno augellin, che vede ed ode’ (Like a hungry baby bird who sees and hears) (S1: 46), where the vital element of maternity has a central role, and which none of the anthologies that served as antecedents to hers had ever selected among Colonna’s poems. 45 Crescimbeni’s profile of Colonna—or, better, the relationship between the sexes and between literary epochs that this profile ideally incarnates—found many later echoes. To recall just two examples, in 1840, it was a member of the Arcadian Academy, Ercole Visconti (Ostilio Cissejo) who was responsible for the first ‘critical’ edition of Colonna’s verse.46 Five years later, when the Academy commissioned a commemorative bust of Colonna, the shepherdess Enrica Orfei (Aurilla Gnidia) enthusiastically indicated in Vittoria Colonna a model who ‘showed the world a beacon of female worth’. 47 In a work known writers to return to glory and honour, and also because I flatter myself that I will in this way earn some sympathy for myself’. The anthology is now available in an anastatic reprint (Bergalli 2006). Bergalli anthologizes the following texts by Colonna, in order: A1: 75, 50, 71, 32, 43, 72, 61; A2: 44; A1: 3, 64, 69, 85, 51; E: 10; A1: 22; S1: 46; A1: 4, S1: 66; a canzone by Ariosto, falsely attributed to Vittoria Colonna: ‘Spirto gentil che sei nel terzo giro’; A1: 89; S1: 5, 88, 13, 100. Also included, though erroneously attributed to Veronica Gambara, is E: 29. The numbering given is that found in Colonna 1982. 43 Bergalli (ed.) 1726, ‘To the Reader’ (unnumbered). 44 ‘secondo il merito corrisposta … nel maneggio dei teneri affetti’. Bergalli (ed.) 1726: 269. 45 For a bilingual edition, see Cox (ed.) 2013, 196. 46 Colonna 1840. 47 ‘ … e del valor femineo / segnale al mondo offrì’. Visconti 1845: 100, stanza 3, lines 5–6 (‘Della Signora Contessa Enrica Orfei fra gli Arcadi Aurilla Gnidia, Ode’).

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commemorating the same event, Visconti recalls Crescimbeni’s appreciation of Colonna: ‘Writing his history of vernacular poetry, and coming to the era when Colonna lived, he showed himself so knowledgeable about her, and such an admirer of her intellect, that it seemed to him that all the encomia and tributes that she had received up to that point were insufficient to her great worth, and he wanted to outstrip them all with his own praises’. 48 In conclusion, then, we may confirm the validity of the two working hypotheses proposed at the beginning of this essay: the first, relative to the importance of Vittoria Colonna’s poetry for the elaboration of a founding canon of women’s poetry in Italy, which crystallized during the first phase of the Arcadian movement; and the second, complementary to the first, regarding the influential role played by the tradition of sixteenth-century female-authored Petrarchist poetry—and especially the disruptive power of the ‘mighty blow’ that Colonna gave to the ‘barbarousness’ of the preceding century—in orienting Crescimbeni’s choice to favour the presence of women in the Arcadian Academy, in the interest of bringing about the desired renewal of literary taste. The synecdoche represented by the ‘Colonna-place’ delineated by Crescimbeni revealed itself extremely productive and it initiated a long cultural and literary trajectory, capable of embracing the women and the men of Arcadia, their conception of how to produce poetry, and their taste for an inclusive novelty of custom which expressed itself, as in the most functional of renaissances, through an active comparison with the past.

Bibliography Abbreviations Companion

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016), ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden.

Primary works Ariosto, L. (2016) Orlando furioso [1532], ed. E. Bigi, P. Floriani and C. Zampese. Milan. Bergalli, L. (ed.) (1726) Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo … Parte prima, che contiene le rimatrici antiche fino all’anno 1575. parte seconda, che contiene le rimatrici dell’anno 1575, fino al presente. Venice.

48 Visconti 1845: 20.

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––– (2006) Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo, reprinted with a critical note by A. Chemello. Mirano. Buonarroti, M. (2016) Rime e lettere, ed. A. Corsaro and G. Masi. Milan. Colonna, V. (1558) Tutte le rime … con l’espositione del Signor Rinaldo Corso. Venice. ––– (1840) Le rime di Vittoria Colonna, ed. P. E. Visconti. Rome. ––– (1982) Rime, ed. A. Bullock. Rome. Contile, L. (1546) Il primo /-secondo volume delle lettere, 2 vols. Venice. Crescimbeni, G. M. (1698) L’istoria della volgar poesia scritta. Rome. ––– (1708) L’Arcadia. Rome. ––– (1714) L’istoria della volgar poesia. 2nd edn. Rome. Gravina, G. (1973a) ‘Della divisione d’Arcadia, lettera ad un amico’, in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. A. Quondam. Bari: 469–77. ––– (1973b) ‘Della divisione d’Arcadia’, in Scritti critici e teorici, ed. A. Quondam. Bari: 479–90. Muratori, L. A. (1706) Della perfetta poesia italiana, spiegata, e dimostrata con varie osservazioni, e con varj giudizj sopra alcuni componimenti altrui. Modena. Recanati, G. B. (ed.) (1716) Poesie italiane di rimatrici viventi raccolte da Teleste Ciparissiano, pastore arcade. Venice. Rime (1545) Rime diverse di molti eccellentissimi autori. Venice. Rime degli Arcadi (1716–22), 9 vols. Rome. Saluzzo, D. (1802) Poesie, 2 vols. Pisa. Visconti, P. E. (1845) ‘Ragionamento’, in Per la inaugurazione del busto di Vittoria Colonna. Solenne adunanza tenuta dagli Arcadi nella Protomoteca Capitolina il di 12 maggio 1845. Rome: 11–26.

Secondary works Allen, B., K. J. Jewell and M. Kittel (eds.) (1986) The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from. the Middle Ages to the Present: A Bilingual Anthology. New York. Baragetti, S. (2012) I poeti e l’accademia. Le Rime degli Arcadi (1716–1781). Milan. Campanello, M, P. Petteruti Pellegrino, P. Procaccioli, E. Russo and C. Viola (eds.) (2019) Canoni d’Arcadia. Il custodiato di Crescimbeni. Rome. Chemello, A. and Ricaldone, L. (2000) Geografie e genealogie letterarie. Erudite, biografe, croniste, narratrici, épistolières, utopiste tra Settecento e Ottocento. Padua. Coppens, C. and A. Nuovo (2005) I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del XVI secolo. Geneva. Cox, V. (2006) ‘Attraverso lo specchio: le petrarchiste del Cinquecento e l’eredità di Laura’, in Petrarca: canoni, esemplarità, ed. V. Finucci. Rome: 117–50.

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––– (2012) ‘Declino e caduta della scrittura femminile nell’Italia del Seicento’, in Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies, ed. V. Cox and C. Ferrari. Bologna: 157–84. Cox (ed.) (2013) Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore. Crivelli, T. (2014) La donzelletta che nulla temea. Percorsi alternativi nella letteratura italiana tra Sette e Ottocento. Rome. ––– (2016) ‘The print tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime’, in Companion: 69–139. ––– (2019) ‘“e del valor femineo / segnale al mondo offrì”: Vittoria Colonna in Arcadia’, in Canoni d’Arcadia. Il custodiato di Crescimbeni, ed. M. Campanello, P. Petteruti Pellegrino, P. Procaccioli, E. Russo and C. Viola. Rome: 91–108. Croce, B. (1943) ‘Ada Negri’ [1906], in La letteratura della nuova Italia. Saggi critici (1943-45). 6 vols. Bari: IV.344–65. ––– (1949) ‘L’Arcadia e la poesia del Settecento’, in La letteratura italiana del Settecento. Note critiche. Bari: 1–14. Doglio, M. L. and Pastore Stocchi, M. (2013) Rime degli Arcadi I-XIV, 1716–1781. Un repertorio. Rome. Govi, F. (2010) I classici che hanno fatto l’Italia. Milan. Mazzini, V. (2013) ‘L’istoria della volgar poesia’ di G. M. Crescimbeni, testo di riferimento della ‘Perfetta poesia italiana’ di L. A. Muratori: una ricognizione, in Muratoriana-Online [https://www.centrostudimuratoriani.it/strumenti/ mol-2013-tutto/mol-2013-mazzini/, accessed 29 March 2021]: 61–78. Quondam, A. (1973) ‘L’istituzione Arcadia. Sociologia e ideologia di un’accademia’, Quaderni storici 23: 389–438. Robin, D. (2016) ‘The lyric voices of Vittoria Colonna and the women of the Giolito anthologies, 1545–1559’, in Companion: 433–66. Stella, C. (2019) ‘Il ruolo di Vittoria Colonna nelle Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime e virtuosissime donne (1559)’, Italian Studies 74/3: 242–59.

About the author Tatiana Crivelli is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Zurich. Regarding Colonna, she has worked particularly on the Rime, including her contribution on the print tradition for the Brill Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016), which she coedited.



Volume Bibliography

Abbreviations Companion DBI GSLI Innovation Sapegno

A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. A Brundin, T. Crivelli and M. S. Sapegno. Leiden. Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1960–). Rome. Giornale storico della letteratura italiana. Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (2020) ed. S. McHugh and A. Wainwright. Newark, DE. Al crocevia della storia. Poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna (2016) ed. M. S. Sapegno. Rome.

Manuscripts Treviso, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 3125. Vittorio Veneto, Biblioteca di Vittorio Veneto, MS 683. Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, MS I.437. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi LIV 79. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 11539. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS Cons. Ven. 160.4.1.

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Index of Citations of Colonna’s Letters and Verse

See also the entry for ‘Colonna, Vittoria: works’ in the Thematic Index for more general discussion. Numbering for the letters is taken from Colonna 1892 and for the verse from Colonna 1982. Letters in Colonna 1892 XII: 122 XVIII: 50, 121–22, 262 XX: 138 XXI: 143–4 XL: 333 XLI: 123 XLII: 202–3 LXXIV: 121 LXXIX: 260 LXXXVII: 137–9 CXII: 18, 57 CXXIII: 193 CXXXVIII: 56 CXXXIX: 57–8 CXLI: 58 CXLII: 60 CLII: 66 CLIV: 63–4 CLXI: 61 CLXIII: 62, 223 CLXXIV: 67–9 CLXVIII: 76 CLXIX: 76, 125–6 CLXX: 76, 2321 CLXXV: 59 Supplemento V: 149–50

Letters from other sources 59, 64–7, 149

Verse A1: 1: 48n48, 95–110, 293–8 A1: 3: 367n42

1 For CLVIII-CLXX, first published in Colonna 1544, see also ‘Colonna, Vittoria: works: religious prose: Litere’ in Thematic Index.

A1: 4: 367n42 A1: 5: 297 A1: 6: 102n25 A1: 15: 104, 320n21 A1: 16: 293n7, 297 A1: 22: 367n42 A1: 24: 293n7, 298–9 A1: 30: 344–5 A1: 32: 367n42 A1: 35: 128n35, 130, 143n29 A1: 36: 128n35, 130 A1: 37: 128n35, 130–1 A1: 43: 367n42 A1: 50: 367n42 A1: 51: 367n42 A1: 58: 335 A1: 61: 367n42 A1: 64: 367n42 A1: 69: 130, 367n42 A1: 71: 123n21, 128n35, 130, 293n7, 297, 300–3, 356–7, 367n42 A1: 72: 367n42 A1: 74: 293n7 A1: 75: 130, 293n7, 367n42 A1: 85: 367n42 A1: 88: 129n40 A1: 89: 339–40, 367n42 A2:1 (the Pistola): 117–19, 127, 130, 138, 232 A2: 6: 130 A2: 19: 293n7 A2: 23: 130, 293n7 A2: 24: 128n35 A2: 28: 293n7 A2: 31: 293n7 A2: 44: 367n42 S1:1: 44n27, 146, 191n45, 277, 328 S1: 2: 145 S1: 4: 277n15, 287n47, 320 S1: 5: 367n42 S1: 7: 131 S1: 12: 164n32 S1: 13: 144–5, 367n42 S1: 19: 145, 149 S1: 30: 148n34

400 Index of Citations of Colonna’s Le t ters and Verse S1: 35: 146n30 S1: 37: 145 S1: 43: 146n30 S1: 45: 145–6 S1: 46: 367 S1: 47: 148 S1: 53: 146, 320 S1: 57: 158–9, 161–4 S1: 58: 144 S1: 61: 324 S1: 63: 148 S1: 66: 367n42 S1: 69: 326 S1: 72: 146n30 S1: 77: 147–8 S1: 78: 192–3 S1: 81: 146 S1: 88: 367n42 S1: 90: 131 S1: 92: 148 S1: 95: 149 S1: 97: 131 S1: 100: 88, 90–1, 127, 131, 367n42 S1: 101: 88, 131 S1: 102: 131 S1: 103: 126–7, 131 S1: 104: 88, 131 S1: 105: 88, 131 S1: 106: 88, 131 S1: 107: 131 S1: 108: 126, 131, 191–2 S1: 109: 131 S1: 110: 131 S1: 111: 131 S1: 112: 131 S1: 113: 159–61 S1: 114: 131 S1: 115: 131 S1: 116: 131, 359n26 S1: 117: 131 S1: 118: 131, 324 S1: 119: 131 S1: 120: 131 S1: 121: 131, 222–3, 231–2 S1: 122: 131 S1: 123: 131, 192n47 S1: 124: 131, 148 S1: 125: 131, 148n34 S1: 126: 131, 146

S1: 127: 131 S1: 128: 131 S1: 129: 131, 147 S1: 130: 131 S1: 131: 88, 131, 155–7, 161 S1: 132: 131 S1: 136: 131 S1: 137: 123n21, 131 S1: 138: 131 S1: 139: 131, 293n7 S1: 140: 131 S1: 141: 131 S1: 142: 131 S1: 152: 131 S1: 155: 223n66, 231 S1: 159: 164n32 S1: 163: 131 S1: 166: 131 S1: 168: 148n34 S1: 170: 131 S1: 179: 277n15 S2: 8: 248n27 S2: 22: 88–90, 147 S2: 23: 277n17 S2: 25: 223n66 S2: 26: 223n66 S2: 31: 326 S2: 36 (the Trionfo di Cristo): 148, 223n66, 232 E: 1: 129n40 E: 2: 129n40 E: 3: 128n35, 128n37 E: 5: 128n35, 129n40 E: 7: 128n35, 128n37 E: 8: 128n37, 359n26 E: 9: 128nn36–7 E: 10: 128nn35–7, 129n40, 367n42 E: 13: 129n40 E: 14: 123n21, 129n40 E: 17: 129n40 E: 18: 129n40 E: 19: 128n35, 128n37, 359n26 E: 24: 128nn35–6 E: 25: 128n35, 129n40 E: 26: 128n35, 129n40 E: 27: 128nn35–7 E: 29: 367n42 E: 30: 128n35, 128n37



Thematic Index

Page numbers in italics refer to images. In subentries throughout, ‘Colonna’ refers to Vittoria Colonna. academies, literary: 38–51, 341, 352–68 Acciaiuoli, Niccolò: 81–2 Aglauro see Maratti Zappi, Faustina Albignana, Chiara: 342–4 Alighieri, Dante see Dante Alighieri Allegri da Correggio, Antonio see Correggio, Antonio Allegri da Allori, Alessandro: 248n27, 252, 254 Allori, Cristofano: 261 Ammirato, Scipione: 341 Andreini, Isabella: 313 Anisio, Giano: 38, 41, 47 anthologies: Colonna’s presence in: 118, 187, 278–83, 287, 312–13, 356 in Arcadian movement: 359, 366–7 Giolito verse anthologies: 281, 343, 358–9 of verse by women: 101n19, 357, 359, 366–7 Arcadia see academies Aretino, Pietro: 120, 122, 137–9, 149, 280 Ariosto, Ludovico: 43, 304n47, 309, 333, 367n42 on Colonna: 48, 97–8, 262, 356 art patronage: and Colonna: 199–204, 239–47 of aristocratic women: 205, 219–20, 247, 260–2 Augustine, Saint: 139, 176, 274 Barberi, Nicolò de’: 210, 211 Battiferri, Laura: 101–4, 108 Beatrice: 19, 340 Beatrizet, Nicolas: 189–90, 255–57 Beccadelli, Ludovico: 57, 137 Bembo, Pietro: 119, 174, 278, 283 and Colonna: 24n19, 25n24, 122–4, 175–6, 262, 318 as addressee of Colonna’s verse: 130–1, 297, 300–3, 356–7 and tradition of conjugal verse: 332–6 social and literary networks: 42–3, 67, 84–5, 334 Bergalli, Luisa: 312–13, 366–7 Bernardi, Giovanni: 180 Berni, Francesco: 130–1 Bettini, Bartolomeo: 241, 243n19 Bible: 213, 277 and Colonna: 131, 136, 139, 153–65 books of Genesis: 61, 160 Exodus: 58n9, 160 Deuteronomy: 296

Psalms: 24 Song of Songs: 333 Matthew: 160 Luke: 69, 155, 158–9 John: 65, 144, 147, 233–4, 248–50, 255 Acts: 59, 125 2 Corinthians: 192, 257 James: 62 see also Mary and Mariology; Mary Magdalene Birgitta, Saint and Colonna: 22, 77–8, 81, 84–7, 89–91 and Mary Magdalene: 81, 258 as exemplary widow: 84, 88 reception in Italy: 81–5 works: 78–80, 82–3, 85, 87, 89–90 see also Mary and Mariology: in Saint Birgitta’s thought Bloom, Harold: 110 Boccaccio, Giovanni: 82, 241, 277, 292, 296, 309 Fiammetta as model for Colonna: 117, 119 Bramantino: 264n55 Bridget of Sweden see Birgitta, Saint Britonio, Girolamo: 38, 41, 44–5, 47 Bronzino, Agnolo: 102, 233n7, 235, 249–50, 252, 253 Bufalini, Giulio: 106–7, 109 Bugiardini, Giuliano: 245 Bullock, Alan, as editor of Colonna’s verse: 19n8, 27, 127–31 Buonarroti, Michelangelo see Michelangelo Buonarroti Campanile, Jacopo: 38, 51 Campiglia, Maddalena: 310 canon, literary: 283, 352 and women writers: 110, 313 Colonna’s place in: 18–19, 24–5 established in part by Bembo: 332, 336 established in part by Corso: 292, 297, 301, 303–4 established in part by Crescimbeni: 361, 368 Cantarini, Vincenzo: 104, 106 Cantelmo, Porzia: 41 Capanio see Campanile, Jacopo Capece, Porzia: 337–8, 339 Capece, Scipione: 41, 43 Capuchin order: 77, 84–5, 87, 136, 163 Carafa di Tarsia, Camilla: 337 Carafa, Diomede: 47

402 Thematic Index Carafa, Ferrante: 281, 282 Carafa, Gian Pietro see Paul IV Carbone, Girolamo: 40–3, 47 Cario, Alfesibeo see Crescimbeni, Giovan Mario Cariteo see Gareth, Benedetto Carucci da Pontormo, Jacopo see Pontormo, Jacopo Carucci da Carnesecchi, Pietro: 60–1 Caro, Annibale: 137n6 Castiglione, Baldassare: 47n43, 119, 334 and Colonna: 49–50, 121–2, 262 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint: 76, 87, 118–19, 131, 209, 230 Catherine of Siena, Saint: 83, 125, 163 Cavalieri, Tommaso de’: 177, 180 cento technique: 104, 320n21 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: 55, 249, 260 and Colonna: 128n35, 130–1, 138, 143–4 ‘cheap print’: 273–6, 284–7 Cibo, Caterina: 84 Cieco da Forlì, Cristoforo see Scanello, Cristoforo Cima da Conegliano: 258, 259 Clement VII, Pope: 44, 180, 215, 242, 244 and Colonna: 49 Clement VIII, Pope: 106–8 Colao, Lucia: 310–28 Colombini, Giovanni: 238 Colonna, Ascanio: 55, 128n35, 130 Colonna, Pompeo: 130, 262, 359n26 Colonna, Stefano: 310, 314–18, 320n23, 321–2 Colonna, Vittoria, biography: and Colonna family: 18n4, 24n20, 55–6, 109, 130 and d’Avalos family: 37–9, 130, 232, 341 artworks produced for: 174, 177, 178, 186–92, 199–224, 229–66 as connoisseur of art: 193, 218, 221–2, 277 as critic of literature: 121–3, 336 asceticism: 60–1, 139 biographies: 26, 118n3, 142 celebrity: 18, 48, 98, 176, 275 death and estate: 69, 203–4 education and family background: 22, 42, 49 friendships and social networks: 55–69, 84–5, 117–32, 173–4, 204–5, 262–3 investigated for heresy: 60–1, 64–5 perceived gender ambiguity: 123, 361–2 political and social agency: 18, 49, 78, 258n40, 262 travels and intended pilgrimages: 55–6, 87, 139, 203, 232n4 see also Colonna, Vittoria, reception history; Colonna, Vittoria, works; Reform movement: and Colonna Colonna, Vittoria, reception history: 17–28, 174–6 as ethical model: 18–19, 22, 97–100, 361–2, 364–5, 367–8

compared to: Artemisia: 18, 97, 106; Portia: 42n18, 340; Queen of Sheba: 18, 356n16; Sappho: 44 in Ariosto: 48, 97–8, 356 puns on name: 48, 51, 102, 106, 135–49 as literary / stylistic model: 24–5, 297, 355–6 for conjugal verse: 24, 331–45 for religious verse: 23–4, 310, 318, 320 for spiritual letters: 118–19 for widowhood verse: 95–110, 174, 277–8, 280, 334–42, 364–5 for women writers: 21–2, 95–110, 363–8 in later sixteenth century / CounterReformation: 98, 104–10, 276–87, 332, 342–4 in seventeenth century: 18, 109, 355–6 in eighteenth century: 18–19, 355–67 in nineteenth century: 19, 367–8 in twentieth century: 19–21, 37–8, 76–7, 124, 127–30 in twenty–first century: 19–28, 76–7, 98, 332–3 in visual arts: 44, 137, 161 see also Bullock, Alan; canon, literary: Colonna’s place in; Colonna, Vittoria, works: circulation during lifetime; Corso, Rinaldo Colonna, Vittoria, works: circulation during lifetime: 20, 127–32, 164n33, 175 in manuscript: 24n19, 120–4, 127–31, 139–50 Vat. lat. 11539 (gift manuscript for Michelangelo) 26, 124, 131, 164, 175, 230 in print: 21, 100, 118–19, 128, 136, 161–3, 275, 357 in Bembo’s 1535 Rime: 123, 334, 336, 357 in 1538 princeps: 100, 128, 136, 175–6, 275, 333 in 1546 Valgrisi edition: 124, 128, 131, 136, 162–4, 164n32; 281n29 in popular print editions: 275 conjugal / widowhood verse: 24, 95–8, 293–302, 332–3 epistolary verse: 120, 300–2, 356–7 problems with traditional categorization: 127–31 Latin oration (attrib.): 143 Latin verse: 139–50 letters: 26, 56–68, 118, 120–7, 143 religious prose writings: 27 Litere: 75–6, 81, 118–19, 125–7, 231–2 Pianto: 27, 125, 186, 191, 266 religious verse: 23–4, 131, 143–9, 153–65, 174, 191–3 on Mary Magdalene: 131, 222–3, 231 on the Virgin Mary: 88–91, 126–7, 131, 155–7, 191–2 see also Colonna, Vittoria, reception and Index of Citations of Colonna’s Letters and Verse

Thematic Index

Colonna de Toledo, Vittoria (Colonna’s niece): 24n20 Colonna, Vittoria (Chiara Maria della Passione): 109 Comendone, Giovanni Francesco: 311 Condivi, Ascanio: 245 Contarini, Gasparo: 84–5, 129–30, 359n26 Contile, Luca: 18, 287, 356, 360 convents and convent culture: 82–5, 109n41, 219–21, 310 and Colonna: 22, 55, 59, 86–7, 232 copies and copying, in artistic production: 173–93, 200, 248–4, 261–2 Correggio, Antonio Allegri da: 207–9, 260–1 Corso, Rinaldo, commentary on Colonna’s verse: 101, 118, 128–9, 161–2, 291–304 reception of: 278, 356, 361 Council of Trent: 66, 85, 163–4, 342; see also Counter-Reformation Counter-Reformation: 85, 164, 276, 352 and Colonna’s influence: 23–4, 98, 106–7, 309–28, 332, 342–5 Crescimbeni, Giovan Mario: 25, 353–68 Croce, Benedetto: 19n9, 352–4 da Lucca, Pietro: 176, 273 Dal Bene, Giovanni: 283–4 Daniele da Volterra: 245 Dante Alighieri: 99–100, 102, 241, 340, 354 as inspiration to Colonna: 97, 232, 292, 294–6 d’Aragona, Tullia: 50, 101n21, 283 d’Argenta, Piero: 244–5 d’Avalos family: 232, 243, 248 d’Avalos, Alfonso, Marquis of Vasto: 242–3, 260 relationship with Colonna: 128n35, 130, 232 promotion of Colonna’s work: 262, 341 promotion of Neapolitan literary tradition: 341–2 relationships with artists: 201–2, 239–40, 243, 245 d’Avalos, Costanza (Colonna’s aunt–in–law): 37–38, 47, 86, 139, 336; see also Ischia d’Avalos, Ferrante Francesco, Marquis of Pescara: in Colonna’s verse: 24, 95–8, 117–18, 123, 298–301, 356 military career: 137–8, 143–4, 232 relationship with Colonna: 62, 118, 232, 344–5 see also Colonna, Vittoria, works: conjugal / widowhood verse d’Avalos Piccolomini, Costanza (Colonna’s cousin–in–law): 59n12, 150 as recipient of Colonna’s spiritual letters: 75–6, 88, 118–19, 125, 232 d’Este, Ercole II: 56, 232n4 d’Este, Isabella: 87, 205, 247, 260–2 d’Este family: 139, 150 del Bene, Giovanni 283–4 della Casa, Giovanni: 128–9

403 della Rovere, Guidobaldo I: 49 della Rovere, Guidobaldo II: 203–4, 317 devotion, religious and literature: 157–65, 190–3, 221–2, 276–8 and reading practices: 154–7, 159n19, 161, 164–65, 176–7, 273–6, 278–87 and the visual arts: 188–91, 199, 201, 204, 206–16, 248 drawings: 174, 177–8, 186, 193, 221–3, 233 paintings: 218, 221, 224, 263n53 paxes: 183–90 di Costanzo, Angelo: 38 Dionisotti, Carlo: 19n8, 21n14, 120, 122, 334–5 di Tarsia, Galeazzo: 38, 138n11, 336–7 Dolce, Lodovico: 121, 283 Domenichi, Lodovico: 357, 359, 366 Dominican order: 24, 83, 265n56 Donatello: 177, 181, 182 Doni, Anton Francesco, 43, 359n26 Dürer, Albrecht: 185–6, 187, 205, 248n27 Ebu, Giovanni: 250–1 Elettra see Gabrielli Capizucchi, Prudenza Encinas, Pedro de: 24 England 19, 21n3, 79, 110; see also Pole, Reginald epistolarity: 119–21 epistolary mode, in visual arts: 205–6, 219, 221, 224 see also Colonna, Vittoria, works: epistolary verse and letters Erimanteo, Opico see Gravina, Gian Vincenzo eroticism, in devotional art: 212–14, 219–24, 263 evangelism see Reform movement Eyck, Jan van: 175 exile, political: 39, 55, 59 Ferrara: 135–7, 139, 149–50 Ferrarese, Ippolito see Ippolito Ferrarese Ferrariis, Antonio de (‘Galateo’): 39–41 Fiamma, Gabriele: 24, 277–8, 280, 318 Fidalma see Paolini Massimi, Petronilla Figiovanni, Giovanni Battista: 245 Filocalo, Giovanni: 40–1, 50 ‘Filonico Alicarnasseo’: 118n3, 142 Fini, Daniele: 135–40, 141, 142–43, 149 Florence: and cult of Saint Birgitta: 78, 80, 82–4 as context for artistic production: 177, 241–7, 249–50 Fontana, Lavinia: 234, 236 Forteguerri, Laodamia: 100–1n17, 118n5 Fra Angelico: 235, 237 France: 25, 232, 243n20 and cult of Mary Magdalene: 261, 264–5 see also Marguerite de Navarre, Renée of France Francis, Saint, and Franciscan Order: 83n29, 86, 244 and Colonna: 131, 192n47, 232n4, 249n30 Francisco de Hollanda: 124

404 Thematic Index Franco, Giovanni Battista: 248n27 Fregoso, Federico: 131 friendships see Colonna, Vittoria, biography: friendships and social networks; Michelangelo Buonarroti: friendship with Colonna

Jerome: 139, 201 Jerusalem: 87, 158, 232n4, 249–50 Johanna I of Naples: 81–2, 86

Gabrielli Capizucchi, Prudenza (Elettra): 98n10, 363–4 Galateo see Ferrariis, Antonio de Gambara, Veronica: 43, 50, 130, 367n42 and Colonna’s reception: 101, 109, 118, 292 as art patron: 260 as poet: 18–19, 101, 278, 283, 313, 333–4 as political actor: 18, 260n44 Gareth, Benedetto: 38, 40–3 Garzoni, Candiana: 342 gender: in literary criticism: 20–22, 109–10, 331–3, 352–5, 361–4 in religious history: 75–91, 218–24, 258–62 Ghirlandaio, Domenico: 241 gift exchange: 122–4, 173–4, 202–3, 218 Giberti, Giovan Maria: 122 Giolito publishing house: 281, 338, 343, 358, 359n26 Giovio, Paolo: 38, 43–7, 122–3, 318 on Colonna: 49, 60, 137, 149, 262–3 Giustinian, Orsatto: 24, 310–12, 342, 344 Gondi, Antonio: 243 Gonzaga, Federico II, Marquis of Mantua: 201–3, 205–7, 239–40 Gonzaga, Giulia: 60 Gonzaga, Isabella: 262 Goselini, Giuliano: 24, 342–4 Gravina, Pietro: 40–2, 44n29, 47 Gravina, Gian Vincenzo: 354, 355n11 Graziani, Bartolomeo: 104–06 Grillo, Angelo: 24n22, 332n6 grace (divine): 124, 154–6, 174, 213, 257, 318 in Colonna’s writing: 63–5, 68, 149, 163, 192, 231 in visual arts: 219, 221, 223, 233 see also Reform movement Gualteruzzi, Carlo: 109n39, 335 Guittone d’Arezzo: 296

Latin language, Colonna and: 121–2, 136–50, 249 Laura, representations of: 310–19, 322, 325–7, 335, 36–64 lectio divina and lectio spiritualis see reading practices Leonardo da Vinci: 205, 264n55 Lily, George: 67 Lotto, Lorenzo: 209 Lucca: 104, 232n4, 357, 359, 366n41 Lutheranism: 66, 88, 147 Lyon: 65, 243n20

Holbein the Younger, Hans: 239, 240, 248 Homer: 292, 296, 300, 302–4, 335, 354 Horace: 47, 296 Index of Prohibited Books: 85, 276, 280n28 Inquisition: 60, 64–6, 85, 163, 176 Ippolito Ferrarese: 176, 273–6 Isabelle of France: 86 Ischia and cenacolo of Colonna and Costanza d’Avalos: 37–39, 41–51 and Giovanni Pontano: 45–6 as Colonna’s residence: 60, 86, 203, 206, 232, 239, 249n30 see also salons and literary sociability

Kempe, Margery: 258

Magdalene see Mary Magdalene Magnus, Johannes and Olaus: 85 Malipiero, Girolamo: 280, 283, 310–13, 320–2 Mantua: 202n6, 203, 206, 261–2, 285 Manuzio, Aldo: 125 Maratti Zappi, Faustina (Aglauro): 363–6 Marguerite de Navarre: 17, 18n3, 57, 100–01, 175n9 Marino (city): 55, 121n16, 122n19, 262n52 Marino, Giambattista: 22, 352 Marinella, Lucrezia: 310, 313 Martirano, Bernardino: 41, 137 Mary and Mariology: 82, 258, 364 in Colonna’s poetry: 88–91, 131, 147, 155–7, 161, 232 in Colonna’s thought: 75–8, 81, 125–7, 191–3, 230 in Saint Birgitta’s thought: 78–90, 176, 274, 258 in the visual arts: 178, 181–9, 207, 208, 219, 223 Mary Magdalene: 76, 81, 233–7, 258, 260, 264–5 in Colonna’s commissions and art collection: 204, 219, 221, 239–40 in Colonna’s writings: 87, 118–19, 131, 222–3, 230–2 in the visual arts: 201–18, 238, 240, 257, 261–5 Matraini, Chiara: 98, 101, 104–6, 108, 128–9 Medici, de’ (family): 83, 203, 244 Medici, Carlo de’: 233n7, 249 Medici, Cosimo de’: 248n27 Medici, Ippolito de’: 180 Michelangelo Buonarroti and Florence: 241–4, 250 artwork: 175–6, 182, 213, 246–7, 250–2 friendship with Colonna: 124, 173, 232–3, 262, 266, 351, 362 artwork for Colonna: 154n2, 174, 177, 211, 221, 233 Christ and the Samaritan: 255, 256, 256–7 Christ on the Cross: 193

Thematic Index

Noli mi tangere: 204–5, 218–19, 230–47, 252, 263, 265–6 Pietà: 178, 186–7 gift manuscript from Colonna (Vat. lat. 11539): 127n33, 131, 164, 175, 230 in Colonna’s reception: 18, 26, 164n34 poetic exchanges: 124, 143, 155, 158–9, 162–3 shared religious sympathies: 124, 164, 173–4, 176, 186–93, 218–9 relations with collaborators: 241–2, 244–6 relations with patrons: 242–4, 247 Milan: 232, 242, 264n55, 343–4 Mini, Antonio: 243, 245n25 Minturno, Marcantonio: 38, 47 Minturno, Antonio: 150–1 Molza, Francesco Maria: 283 Montefeltro family: 142 Montefeltro, Battista da: 22 Morosina della Torre, Ambrogina Faustina: 334–7 Morra, Isabella: 100–1n17 Morone, Giovanni: 59, 61, 66 Moses: 58, 160 motherhood, Colonna and: 57–9, 65–9, 110, 345 mysticism, religious: 25, 64, 89, 140 Namur, Blanche of: 78 Naples: 128, 157, 242, 262 and cult of Saint Birgitta: 81–2, 84 as literary and publishing center: 278, 285, 332, 336–42, 357 humanist and literary networks in: 38–47, 49–50, 333 see also Ischia Narducci da Paradiso, Domenica: 83–4 Negri, Ada: 353 networks see Bembo, Pietro: social and literary networks; Colonna, Vittoria, biography: friendships and social networks nuns see convents and convent culture Ochino, Bernardino: 62, 76–7, 84–8, 123–5, 163, 191 Ombona, Domenica: 342 Orfei, Enrica: 367 Orvieto: 55–56, 232n4 Ovid: 43, 117, 119, 292, 296 Heroides: 117, 119, 137 Padua: 57, 67, 177, 186 Paleologa, Margherita: 262 Paolini Massimi, Petronilla (Fidalma): 363–4 Parma: 175, 219, 247, 356 Parmigianino: 215, 247 Parnassus: 41–5, 107–8, 303 patronage see art patronage Paul III, Pope: 55–57, 85, 163–4, 245, 252, 260 Paul IV, Pope: 85 Pavia: 41n13, 96, 138, 232

405 Perugia: 247, 286 Peter, Saint: 131, 159–60, 245 Petrarch and Petrarchism and Bembo: 123, 297, 304, 335, 357 and Colonna: 19–20, 23–25, 97–8, 119, 291–304, 335–44 in visual arts: 102, 220, 222, 241 religious ‘conversion’ of: 23–4, 174, 277–8, 280, 283, 309–28 Pianto see Colonna, Vittoria, works Piccolomini, Alessandro: 23–24, 25n24, 118n5, 283, 292n3 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco: 174 pilgrimage: 286 and Colonna: 87, 232n4, 260 and Saint Birgitta: 78–9, 82 as metaphor: 65, 257 Pirogallo, Filippo: 100, 175 Pole, Margaret: 57 Pole, Reginald: 55–69, 84–5, 131, 149, 176, 223 Pontano, Giovanni: 39–44, 47–51, 333, 341–2 Pontormo, Jacopo Carucci da: 230, 234, 240–5, 249–52, 258, 263–6 popular print see ‘cheap print’ prayer: 176, 248, 252, 260, 274–6, 327–8 in Colonna’s writing: 66–9, 89–90, 124, 153–7, 164, 222 Priuli, Alvise: 61–5, 223 prophetic speech and prophecies: 78–9, 82–4, 87, 89–90, 139 Rabitti, Giovanna: 22, 105nn33–4 Raimondi, Marcantonio: 188, 189 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino): 44, 213, 247 reading practices: 139, 192–3, 260, 274–7, 283–7, 365 annotations: 278, 279, 280–1, 282 readership and reader response: 19, 108, 273–87, 318, 322, 327–8 see also devotion, religious: and reading practices Reform movement: 56, 60, 125, 213 and Colonna: 76–7, 87, 163–4, 218, 230, 249 in Italy: 81–85, 157, 173–4, 232n4, 233n5 see also grace; Mary and Mariology; sola fide; Viterbo religious poetry: 22–4, 107–8, 128, 277–87; see also Colonna, Vittoria, works: religious poetry; Petrarch and Petrarchism: religious conversion of Renée of France: 139, 232n4 rime spirituali: see religious poetry Rome: 60, 251, 344, 356n16 art production in: 177, 183, 185, 244–5 as residence for Colonna: 66–7, 86–8, 124, 232–3 Reform movement in: 81, 88, 157 Romana, Francesca: 258 Rossi, Niccolò d’Aristotele de’ (lo Zoppino): 128, 275, 287n46

406 Thematic Index Rossi, Porzia de’: 337, 339–40 Rosso Fiorentino (Giovan Battista di Jacopo di Gasparre): 215 Rota, Berardino: 38, 41, 47, 137, 336–41 Ruscelli, Girolamo: 291–2, 356n15, 357n18 Sainte-Baume: 232n4, 260, 261n48 salons and literary sociability: 37–51, 129–31, 138–9, 333, 336, 341 see also academies; networks Salt Wars, 55–6, 232n4 Saluzzo, Diodata: 365 Salvatorino, Giovan Giacomo: 310, 312, 314 Sannazaro, Jacopo: 38–43, 46–7, 129, 280, 296, 342 Sansovino, Jacopo: 181n22, 182–3 Sanzio da Urbino, Raffaello see Raphael Sarrocchi, Margherita: 50 Sassone, Adriana: 333 Savonarola, Girolamo: 78, 83–4 Savorgnan, Maria: 336n26 Scaglione, Lucrezia: 150 Scanello, Cristoforo (Cristoforo Cieco da Forlì): 285–86 Schomberg (Schönberg), Nicolas von: 241–44, 245n25, 248 Scripture see Bible Sebastiano del Piombo: 244–45 Sforza, Battista: 22n16 Siena: 283–84, 286 social networks see networks; salons and literary sociability sola fide: 147, 163n28, 174, 176, 257; see also Reform movement Spain: 21n13, 24, 78, 232, 239, 243 spirituali see Reform movement Stampa, Gaspara: 19, 136, 313, 328 Tansillo, Luigi: 24, 38, 138n11, 341 Tasso, Bernardo: 38, 43, 336–337, 338–41, 344 Tebaldeo, Antonio: 130 Terracina, Laura: 100–01n17, 101n21, 283, 313 Thomas: 131, 258, 259, 324–25 Thomas à Kempis: 161 Tintoretto: 43n25 Titian: 199, 200, 210, 210–11, 217, 243n17 and Magdalene for Colonna: 201–07, 212–24, 239–40, 252n34, 258n41, 262 Turina, Francesca: 24, 98, 101, 106–09, 342, 344 Urbino: 49, 102, 203–04

Valdés, Juan de: 60, 88, 157 Valori, Baccio the Younger: 216–18 Varano, Camilla Battista da: 22 Varano, Costanza: 22n16 Vasari, Giorgio: 204, 215–16, 218, 240–2, 249 Vecellio, Tiziano see Titian Venice and the Veneto: and women’s writing: 75, 161, 280, 292, 310–13 as publishing center: 273, 283, 344 Venetian art: 202, 206, 216–17, 214, 248 Virgil: 292, 296–303, 335, 340 Virgin Mary see Mary and Mariology Visconti, Pier Ercole: 143, 367–8 visual arts: 173–93 emblems, imprese and mottos: 47, 220, 262–63, 283 engravings, woodcuts and printed works: 161, 174–7, 185–6, 188–90, 255–7, 284 floor tiles: 219–21 medals: 44, 123, 137, 181, 243n17, 257 paintings: 102, 199–224, 229–66 plaquettes: 177–81 paxes: 181–90 portraits: 43–4, 102, 137, 175, 243n17 see also art patronage; Colonna, Vittoria: biography: artworks produced for and as connoisseur of art; Colonna, Vittoria: reception: in visual arts; devotion, religious: and visual arts; Mary Magdalene; and individual artists vita activa and vita contemplativa: 49, 75–6, 118–19, 317–18, 323–4; see also devotion, religious Vitale, Giovanbattista: 278, 279, 280 Vitelli, Alessandro: 241, 249 Viterbo: 55–69, 157n17, 232n4 widowhood: 78–91, 99–104, 273, 275, 331–3, 351 Colonna as exemplum: 42n18, 86, 96–109, 124, 275, 293–4 Colonna compared to Artemisia: 18, 97, 106 see also Birgitta, Saint: as exemplary widow women’s writing: 91, 103–10, 310–20, 331–3, 354–68 critical attitudes to: 21, 25, 123, 292, 351–4 in early modern Italy: 18–22, 25, 49, 95–110, 117–20, 283 Zacchaeus: 158–9, 161–4 Zoppino, lo see Rossi, Niccolò d’Aristotele de’