Renaissance Woman_The Life of Vittoria Colonna

by Ramie Targoff

  For further biography on Anne Boleyn, see Eric William Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: ‘The Most Happy’ (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004). On her relationship with Renée, see Retha Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

  Details about Renée and her reformist court are found in Alessandro Roveri, Renata di Francia (Turin: Claudiana, 2012), which includes the Italian text of the two letters to Ercole translated here. On Marot’s reformist and literary career, see Ehsan Ahmed, Clément Marot: The Mirror of the Prince (Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood, 2005).

  For further biography on Calvin, see William Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), from which translations of Calvin’s letters are taken.

  Lyndal Roper’s biography of Luther is Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: Bodley Head, 2016). His remark about a “layman armed with Scripture” is quoted by many sources, among them Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon, 2013).

  Citations of Calvin’s Institutes follow John McNeill’s edition, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960). See also Michael Mullett, John Calvin (London: Routledge, 2011).

  Weber’s claim is found in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first translated into English by Talcott Parsons in 1930.

  Carnesecchi describes Vittoria’s uncertainty about works versus faith in his later inquisition; see the transcription in Massimo Firpo and Dario Marcatto, eds., I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557–1567) (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1998–2000).

  For Rabelais’s letter, see The Complete Works of François Rabelais, trans. Donald Frame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

  For more on the life and writings of Catherine of Siena, see, among others, Jane Tylus, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

  For further biography on Marguerite, see Patricia Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian, Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

  Accounts of Elizabeth’s translations are found in Elizabeth I, Translations, 1544–1589, eds. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). On the movements toward and against vernacular Bibles in Europe, see volume 3 of Euan Cameron, ed., The New Cambridge History of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

  Gualteruzzi’s letter to Gheri about Vittoria’s ambitions is reproduced as entry 31 in Pina Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo (Florence: Mandragora, 2005).

  Montmorency’s remarks to King Francis are recounted in a 1540 letter to Ercole II from his ambassador Alberto Sacrati, which is printed in Domenico Tordi, Il codice delle rime di Vittoria Colonna, marchesa di Pescara, appartenuto a Margherita d’Angoulème, regina di Navarra (Pistoia, Italy: Flori, 1900).

  The letter accompanying the manuscript for Marguerite, identified as Ashburnham 1153 at the Laurentian Library in Florence, is reproduced and translated in Abigail Brundin, Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008). For details about the manuscript, see Brundin, Spiritual Poetics, and Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna in Manuscript,” in Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, and Maria Sapegno, eds., A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016); see also the appendix to Alan Bullock’s edition of the Rime.

  On Isabella d’Este, see Lorenzo Bonoldi, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Woman, trans. Clark Anthony Lawrence (Rimini, Italy: Guaraldi, 2015); and Sarah Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013). On Isabella’s patronage, see Sally Anne Hickson, Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua: Matrons, Mystics and Monasteries (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012); see also Francis Ames-Lewis, Isabella and Leonardo: The Artistic Relationship Between Isabella d’Este and Leonardo da Vinci, 1500–1506. On her servants, including the little people Morgantino and Delia, see Julia Mary Cartwright Ady, Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539: A Study of the Renaissance (New York: Dutton, 1903–1907).

  The account of the dinner party where Vittoria’s poetry was recited is printed in Alessandro Luzio, “Vittoria Colonna,” Rivista storica mantovana, vol. 1 (1884), which has the letter signed by one “Rinchinos.” It is now understood, however, that “il Rinchinos” was a pseudonym for Benedetto Accolti, cardinal of Ravenna, who adopted “Nasocane” as another pen name.

  On Bagni di Lucca and changes made to the baths in the nineteenth century, see Marcello Cherubini and Massimo Betti, Bagni di Lucca: il fascino di un’antica stazione termale (Bagni di Lucca, Italy: Bagni di Lucca Terme J.V. & Hotel, 2008).

  Montaigne describes the Bagni di Lucca in the journal of his voyage into Italy; see the entries for May 9, 1581, in his Travel Journal, trans. and ed. Donald Frame (San Francisco: North Frame, 1983).

  General Reference and Further Bibliography

  Eleonora Belligni, Renata di Francia (1510–1575). Un’eresia di corte (Turin: UTET, 2011).

  Gian Biacio Conte, Latin Literature: A History, trans. Joseph Solodow, ed. Don Fowler and Glenn Most (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

  Rosanna Gorris, “«D’un château l’autre»: la corte di Renata di Francia a Ferrara (1528–1560),” in Loredana Olivato, Il Palazzo di Renata di Francia (Ferrara, Italy: Corbo, 1997).

  Guido Achille Mansuelli with Ermanno Arslan and Daniela Scagliarini, Urbanistica e architettura della Cisalpina romana fino al III sec. e.n. (Brussels: Latomus, 1971).

  Clément Marot, Oeuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 2009).

  Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

  Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Renée de France, duchesse de Ferrare. Une protectrice de la réforme en Italie et en France (Paris: Ollendorf, 1896).

  Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946).

  G. F. Taddei, “Un epigramma mistico di Vittoria Colonna,” Il Vasari 12.1-2 (1933).

  9. THE POWER OF PRINT

  For Donne’s remark, see his 1614 letter to Sir Henry Goodyer in Selected Letters, ed. Paul Oliver (Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 2002).

  For further details on the production and distribution of early printed books, see, among others, Angela Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013). On piracy in early modern print, see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). On the various attitudes surrounding the early printing press, see Elizabeth Eisenstein, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Johns, The Nature of the Book. On the relationship between the print industry and women writers, see Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

  On the emergence of the ottavo book format, see Martin Davies’s study on Aldus Manutius, the printer who popularized it: Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice (London: British Library, 1995).

  The Venetian Council’s decree is found in Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  Fillippo Pirogallo’s dedication is in his edition of the Rime (Parma: Viotti, 1538).

  The best English-language biography of Ariosto remains Edmund Gardner’s 1906 The King of Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life, and Times of Lodovico Ariost
o, reprinted by Haskell House in 1968. Citations of the Orlando furioso are from Guido Waldman’s prose translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

  Bembo’s letters to Gualteruzzi are in his Lettere, ed. Ernesto Travi (Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1992).

  For details on the earliest editions of Vittoria’s poetry, see the appendix to Alan Bullock’s edition of the Rime; for a synthesized editorial history, see Tatiana Crivelli, “The Print Tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime,” in Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, and Maria Sapegno, eds., A Companion to Vittoria Colonna (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016). For the archival sources reflecting Vittoria’s relationship to the print industry, see Tordi, Codice delle rime.

  On Donato Rullo, see Carlo de Frede, “Un pugliese familiare del Cardinale Pole: Donato Rullo,” Rivista di letteratura e di storia ecclesiastica 12.1-2 (1980). Rullo’s role in publishing Vittoria’s poetry is discussed in Crivelli, “The Print Tradition.” His letter to Ascanio is printed in Tordi, Codice delle rime.

  The Italian texts of the exchange between Gualteruzzi and della Torre are found in Abigail Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna in Manuscript,” in Brundin, Crivelli, and Sapegno, eds., A Companion to Vittoria Colonna; the translations here are my own. See also Alan Bullock, “A Hitherto Unexplored Manuscript of 100 Poems by Vittoria Colonna in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence,” Italian Studies 21 (1966); and Rossella Lalli, “Una ‘maniera diversa dalla prima’: Francesco Della Torre, Carlo Gualteruzzi e le ‘Rime’ di Vittoria Colonna,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 192.639 (2015).

  For Veronica Gambara’s sonnet, see the translation by Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie in Stortoni, ed., Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Italica, 1997). On the poetry of Gaspara Stampa, see Jane Tylus’s introduction to her translation, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the Rime, a Bilingual Edition, eds. Jane Tylus and Troy Tower (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Unn Falkeid and Aileen Astorga Feng, eds., Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2015). For more on Tullia d’Aragona, see the introduction to Julia Hairston’s edition of Tullia’s poetry, The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014). The privileges granted her by Cosimo are translated by Diana Robin, “The Lyric Voices of Vittoria Colonna and the Women of the Giolito Anthologies, 1545–1559,” in Brundin et al., eds., A Companion to Vittoria Colonna.

  For the Italian text of Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori, see Flori, a Pastoral Drama, eds. Virginia Cox and Lisa Sampson, trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

  The Italian text of Domenichi’s preface is in Deanna Shemek, “The Collector’s Cabinet: Lodovico Domenichi’s Gallery of Women,” in Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, eds., Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France, & Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

  Figures on publications by women in early modern Europe are available in Virginia Cox, Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). On female literacy in early modern Italy, see Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

  Valgrisi’s preface is printed in his 1546 edition (Le rime spirituali della illustrissima Signora Vittoria Colonna marchesana di Pescara, non piu stampate da pochissime infuori, le quali altrove corrotte, et qui corrette si leggono) and in the 1548 reprint from the Venetian press of Comin da Trino.

  On Rinaldo Corso, see Sarah Faggioli’s 2014 dissertation from the University of Chicago, “A Sixteenth-Century Reader and Critic of Vittoria Colonna: Rinaldo Corso’s Commentary on Her Spiritual Rime,” elaborated in a forthcoming publication.

  General Reference and Further Bibliography

  Vittoria Colonna, Sonetti in morte di Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos Marchese di Pescara, ed. Tobia Toscano (Milan: Mondadori, 1988).

  Virginia Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Case of Vittoria Colonna,” in Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, eds., Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France, & Italy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

  Jill Kraye, ed., Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  Rosa Salzberg, “From Printshop to Piazza: The Dissemination of Cheap Print in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” dissertation, Queen Mary College/University of London, 2008.

  10. MICHELANGELO IN LOVE

  For the life and works of Ambrogio Catarino, born Lancilotto Politi, see Beyond the Inquisition: Ambrogio Catarino Politi and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), and Don Weinstein’s translation of Giorgio Caravale’s Sulle tracce dell’eresia: Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553) (Florence: Olschki, 2007). Catarino’s dedication to Vittoria is in the first edition of the Speculum haereticorum fratris Ambrosii Catarini Politi senensis ordinis praedicatorum (Kraków: Johannes Helicz, 1540).

  For further biography on Francisco de Hollanda, see Joaquim Oliviera Caetano, “Francisco de Hollanda (1517–1584): The Fascination of Rome and the Times in Portugal,” in Alice Sedgwick Wohl’s translation of Francisco de Hollanda, On Antique Painting (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), from which citations of Hollanda are taken.

  For the two biographies of Michelangelo written by his contemporaries Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi, see Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston du Chene de Vere, ed. Philip Jacks (New York: Modern Library, 2006), and Condivi, Life of Michelangelo, 2nd ed., trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, ed. Hellmut Wohl (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). Later biographies that treat Michelangelo’s attraction to men include John Addington Symonds’s 1893 Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, republished in 2002 by University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia), and the first volume of Michael Hirst’s Michelangelo (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011–). For a travel guide through Michelangelo’s career in Rome, see Angela Nickerson, A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome (Berkeley, CA: Roaring Forties Press, 2008).

  On Michelangelo’s spirituality, see Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). For Michelangelo’s idiosyncratic use of paper, see Leonard Barkan, Michelangelo: A Life on Paper (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

  For Vittoria’s involvement with the Poor Clares convent, see Och, “Art Patronage.”

  On Vittoria’s cultural patronage, see Marjorie Och, “Vittoria Colonna: Art Patronage and Religious Reform in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1993. For the Titian commission, see Marjorie Och, “Vittoria Colonna and the Commission for a Mary Magdalene by Titian,” in Sheryl Reiss and David Wilkins, eds., Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001).

  For Vittoria’s request for Michelangelo’s now lost Noli me tangere, see Lisa Rafanelli, “Michelangelo’s Noli me tangere for Vittoria Colonna, and the Changing Status of Women in Renaissance Italy,” in Michelle Erhardt and Amy Mooris, eds., Mary Magdalene, Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012), which has the Italian text of the specifications Michelangelo received for the drawing. This commission was first hypothesized by Johannes Wilde, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Michelangelo and His Studio (London: British Museum, 1953), on the basis of a 1531 letter from Giovanni Borromeo, reprinted in Alessandro Luzio, La galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–28. Documenti degli archivi di Mantova e Londra, 2nd ed. (Rome: Bardi, 1974). On the haste wit
h which Michelangelo completed the drawing, see Barbara Agosti, “Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano e Michelangelo),” in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo. Jesus orders Mary Magdelene, “Noli mi tangere,” in John 20.17 in the Latin Vulgate; the English here follows the King James Version.

  For full bibliography on the drawings Michelangelo prepared as gifts for Vittoria, see Monica Bianco and Vittoria Romani, “Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo,” along with the catalog entries that follow it, in Pina Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo (Florence: Mandragora, 2005); see also Alexander Nagel, “Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna,” Art Bulletin 79.4 (1997).

  For Michelangelo’s letters, see the translation of E. Hartley Ramsden, The Letters of Michelangelo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963); for the Italian texts, see Michelangelo, Carteggio, eds. Giovanni Poggi, Paola Barocchi, and Renzo Ristori (Florence: Sansoni, 1965–1983). All citations of Michelangelo’s poetry follow Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rime, ed. Matteo Residori (Milan: Mondadori, 1998).

  The theory that Vittoria is represented in The Last Judgment is Charles de Tolnay’s; see “Le jugement dernier de Michel Ange. Essai d’intepretation,” Art Quarterly 3 (1940). See also volume 5 of de Tolnay’s Michelangelo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960).

  Horace’s vision of his legacy is found in Ode 3.30; see Odes and Epodes, trans. Niall Rudd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  My translations of Vittoria’s letter to Priuli follow the transcription in Sergio Pagano and Concetta Ranieri, Nuovi documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole (Vatican City: Archivio Vaticano, 1989), letter 2.6.

  General Reference and Further Bibliography

  Costanza Barbieri, “‘Chompare e amicho karissimo’: A Portrait of Michelangelo by His Friend Sebastiano,” Artibus et historiae 28.56 (2007).

  George Bull, Michelangelo: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995).