Vittoria Colonna

Vittoria Colonna (b. 1490/2–d. 1547) made her name as the author of numerous lyric poems in the Petrarchan style in 16th-century Italy. Her poetry was widely published in printed editions in her lifetime and after, as well as being set to music by many composers. She was admired as an impeccable stylist who manipulated the sonnet form with considerable agility while also demonstrating the appropriate decorum and gravity. At the same time, especially in her later spiritual verses, Colonna pushed the genre in new, innovative directions that proved very influential for successive generations of poets. Although she always claimed to have no desire to see her work circulate beyond a close group of friends, Colonna’s reputation as a literary figure was considerable by the time of her death in 1547. She began composing poetry early in life, but her renown as a Petrarchist grew in the wake of her husband’s death in 1525, when mourning became the dominant theme in her lyrics. She was promoted by Pietro Bembo, who admired her style and seriousness, and she corresponded with many of the major literary figures of her day. Her involvement with the religious controversies of the 1530s and 1540s brought a decidedly evangelical flavor to much of her mature poetic production, and was also integral to her close friendship with Michelangelo Buonarroti. Notably, Colonna was the first secular woman to achieve a high level of literary status in Italy for vernacular production, and her example opened the way for subsequent women writers to publish in all manner of genres. In this she was greatly aided both by her aristocratic status and by her widowhood, which conferred on her a degree of independence and wealth that allowed her the space to write. She resisted a second marriage and devoted her later years to religion and literature, producing some of her most striking spiritual poetry in the years before her death. She also wrote a number of prose meditations, expressing a female perspective on the reformed faith that so influenced her.