Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact

394 Pages·2021·3.64 MB·English

by  Mchugh COX

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 tan-
gere, 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 11
Acknowledgements 15
Introduction: The Twenty-First Century Vittoria Colonna 17
Virginia Cox
Part 1 Literary and Spiritual Sociability
1. The D’Avalos-Colonna Literary Circle: A ‘Renewed Parnassus’ 37
Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi
2. Late Love: Vittoria Colonna and Reginald Pole 55
Ramie Targoff
Part 2 Widowhood
3. Magistra apostolorum: The Virgin Mary in Birgitta of Sweden
and Vittoria Colonna 75
Unn Falkeid
4. Outdoing Colonna: Widowhood Poetry in the Late Cinquecento 95
Anna Wainwright
Part 3 Poetry
5. The Epistolary Vittoria 117
Maria Serena Sapegno
6. ‘Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, Victoria pendet’ : A Forgotten Spiritual
Epigram by Vittoria Colonna 135
Veronica Copello
7. Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna : Insights into
Early Modern Piety and Poetics 153
Sarah Rolfe Prodan
Part 4 Art
8. ‘Inscribed Upon Their Hearts’: Copying and the Dissemination
of Devotion 173
Jessica Maratsos
9. Titian, Colonna, and the Gender of Pictorial Devotion 199
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 273
Abigail Brundin
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 309
Andrea Torre
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 351
Tatiana Crivelli
Volume Bibliography 371
Index of Citations of Colonna’s Letters and Verse 399
Thematic Index 401