COLONNA, VITTORIA ( 1490-1547). An Ital ian poet. She was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, the Grand Constable' of Naples, and was born in the Castle of Marino near Rome. Her youth was passed among the greatest literary spirits of Italy, and from them she gathered a love of learning, and in that atmosphere com posed her first poems. At seventeen she married Francesco Ferrante d'Avalos, Marquis of Pes earn, to whom she had been betrothed since childhood. He became a favorite genera) of Charles V., and her verses until his death, t bleb occurred from wounds received at the battle of Pavia (1525), are concerned with his repeated absences, and finally with her grief at his loss. The beginning of her friendship with Michelangelo probably came about this time; certainly it was not until her widowhood that their relations became such as to have immortal ized her in Angelo's unpolished, powerful son nets. Just what the relationship was is a debated question. Only a few of her letters to him remain, and those are never lover-like. "Magnificent master." she calls him in one of them, and in another, thanking him for a picture of the Descent from Cross, she says: "I re joke greatly that the angel on the right is so beautiful, because it seems to me that it is in some way a promise that Saint Michael will on the last day place you, Michelangelo, on the right hand of Our Lord." Such is the strain in which they are couched. She spent about ten
years in Naples and Ischia. often visiting Rome, where she constantly saw the sculptor. In 1541 she went to Orvieto, and then to Viterbo. Dur ing her last visit to Rome she was taken ill, and died in the Colonna Palace. Reginald Pole, the cardinals Contarini and Bembo, and Castiglione and Bernardo Tasso, were among her friends, and Charles V. came to visit her. Der influence was felt throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. but she is better remembered for a kind of grace she gave that brilliant but brutal and coarse age than for the quality of her poetry. The second series of her poems, known as the Rime Spirituali, is better than the earlier one; all of them have been collected under the title Rime della dirina Vittoria Cotonna, and published a number of times. The best edition is that by Ercole Visconti (1840). Der letters have also been collected as Lettere inedilc ed altri doeumenti relatiri ai Colonnesi (1875) ; Alcune lettere inedite (1884); and Carteggio (1888). Consult: Saltini, Rime e lettere di ittoria Colonna (Florence, ISGO) ; Reumont, Vittoria Colonna: Leben, Diet, ten, Glauben inn seek-chnten Jab rh u ?lert (Freiburg. 1881) ; Law ley, Vittoria •Colonna : A Study with Transla tions (London. 1889) ; Roscoe. Vittoria Colonna: Her Life and Poems (London, INS).