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

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.