SOURCE: Bassanese, Fiora A. “Vittoria Colonna.” In Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Rinaldina Russell, pp. 85-94. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

[In the following essay, Bassanese offers a brief biography of Colonna and examines the Petrarchan styles and themes in her poetry—including memory, the ideas of Neoplatonism, and Christian spirituality—and surveying the response to her work by critics in the twentieth century.]

BIOGRAPHY

In her life and in her writing, Vittoria Colonna embodied the ideals of noble Renaissance womanhood: chastity, honor, decorum, gravity, and piety. Acclaimed in life, she came to represent the highest female achievements of her epoch after death. For centuries, Colonna was considered Italy's most famous woman writer. Scion of the upper aristocracy, Vittoria's father, Fabrizio, descended from one of Rome's most important families and pursued the military and political careers the Colonnas had embraced for centuries. Her mother, Agnese, was a Montefeltro of Urbino, a small but intellectually brilliant court in central Italy. Like many other daughters of the nobility, Vittoria Colonna received a solid education as preparation for marriage.

Engaged at the age of three to Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, the Marquis of Pescara, Vittoria wed in 1509, a political match that would solidify Fabrizio Colonna's ties to the Neapolitan monarchy. Like the Colonnas, the d'Avalos were a powerful family with strong ties to Spain and the Empire. The couple lived in Naples, often at their princely residence on the island of Ischia, where the Marchesa Vittoria held court, enjoying the company of notable intellectuals and artists like the poets Jacopo Sannazaro, Bernardo Tasso, and Cariteo. The young Colonna was celebrated for her intellect, taste, and virtue. She soon tried her hand at composing poems, as was the social custom, but did not publish any for decades.

The Pescara marriage was childless and marked by many separations. Colonna raised her husband's orphaned cousin, Alfonso d'Avalos del Vasto, as their heir, maintaining the public facade of a happy and virtuous wife, although she saw relatively little of her husband, whom she appears to have loved. An ally of the papacy and Spain, the Marquis spent most of his time at war, earning a considerable reputation, leading to his captaincy of the imperial troops of Charles V. A military man by temperament, training, and choice, D'Avalos embodied many of the virile ideals of his day. A respected and powerful leader, as well as an ambitious and ruthless one, the Marquis was even considered as a possible successor to the Neapolitan throne, which he refused. In 1525, D'Avalos was wounded in the battle of Pavia and died soon afterward; his wife had not seen him for years. After his death, Colonna dedicated her life to charity, religious matters, and intellectual pursuits. She chose not to remarry and considered entering a religious order for a time.

Throughout her married life, Colonna maintained close ties to her family in Rome, where she often visited and would return to live. In her dignified widowhood, she preferred the life of convents to that of courts. However, it was not a cloistered existence, for she received guests, traveled extensively, and corresponded with many of Italy's luminaries. Ever surrounded by admirers, the Marchesa was often at the center of literary and theological discussions, particularly at her regular Sunday gatherings at the convent of San Silvestro. Given her piety and desire for religious renewal, Colonna's circle naturally included various counterreformational leaders, such as Juan Valdès and Bernardino Ochino. In the 1530s Colonna and the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti developed a special friendship. The two shared many religious and artistic interests, and their affinity slowly developed into a deep spiritual love that sustained them both. The noblewoman and the artist exchanged letters, poetry, and drawings that survive today, testifying to the elevated nature of their bond.

Colonna's character and proclivities affected her poetry. A woman who dedicated much of her time to reading, discussion, and prayer, the Marchesa consequently produced elevated, pondered, and dignified verse. Her numerous love sonnets in the Petrarchan manner celebrate her deceased husband, whom she metamorphosed into a spiritual guide. Later, she composed sacred verse with a mystical bent. Some of Colonna's theological views were unconventional and verged on Protestant reformism, considered heretical in some Vatican circles. Her support of the Capuchin order and her friendship with its greatest preacher, Ochino, led the Inquisition to investigate her beliefs, casting a shadow on her final years.

Due to her family's loss of papal favor, her own failing health, the death of Alfonso del Vasto, and her difficulties with the church, Colonna's last years were not serene. In 1542, her friend and religious mentor Ochino fled Italy to avoid the Inquisition. The following year, she experienced a debilitating illness while residing in Viterbo, after which she retreated to the Benedictine convent of Sant'Anna in Rome. Early in 1547 Colonna took seriously ill again and died shortly after, on February 25. Michelangelo was at her side.

An international celebrity for decades, Vittoria Colonna was nevertheless a very private and modest woman, who did not seek public recognition. Although friends and admirers read her works in manuscript form, she would not permit their publication for years. A poem appeared in print in 1535, three more in 1536. It was not until 1538 that an edition of Colonna's poetry was published, without her involvement. More than twenty editions of her works quickly followed in the sixteenth century alone, a testimony to the popularity of the writer and the enduring appeal of her words.

Publications of Colonna's poetry after 1547 divide the compositions in two parts: love poems dedicated to her husband and the religious works. The most significant editions of the Rime (Rhymes) include the 1558 version prepared by Rinaldo Corso, who offers a commentary as well as variants of the poems; Giambatista Rota's 1760 edition is the first to publish all Colonna's known verse in one volume; the 1840 corrected edition by Pietro Ercole Visconti formed the basis for many modern publications; and the exceptional 1982 critical edition by Alan Bullock includes a panoply of critical notes, bibliographical references, a history of the manuscript and published sources, synoptic tables, and variant possibilities.

MAJOR THEMES

Once the vernacular supplanted Latin as the cultural language of Italy, the production of literature became far more accessible to women, many of whom dedicated themselves to intellectual pursuits. Vittoria Colonna's exemplary character and prestigious social standing set her apart in the eyes of her contemporaries, who saw in her the embodiment of the perfect lady. Her poetry achieved similar popularity, stemming from its noble tone and adherence to the period's canonical dictates. Stylistically, Colonna was a petrarchista, or Petrarchan imitator. Philosophically, she was a Neoplatonist with marked Christian inclinations. Personally, she maintained a lifelong reputation for impeccable virtue. Both the woman and the writer ideally suited Renaissance taste.

Vittoria Colonna's poetry is manifestly influenced by the taste of her time, which mirrored her own sensibilities. Petrarchan, like most other verse written in the first half of the sixteenth century, her compositions imitate the themes, language, form, poetic devices, and imagery used by Francesco Petrarca, the acknowledged master, in his fourteenth century Rime sparse (Scattered rhymes), also known as the Canzoniere, and by his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century imitators, notably Pietro Bembo. Although essentially mainstream, Colonna is nevertheless a good Petrarchan emulator, given the limitations of the code, and an extraordinary female voice in a male-oriented canon.

The Marchesa's lyric opus is substantial. The most recent edition of the Rime (Rhymes), edited by Alan Bullock in 1982, includes almost four hundred poems, mostly sonnets. Colonna's canzoniere is customarily divided into two large sections: the rime amorose (love lyrics), in which a number of poems, generally sonnets, are dedicated to her dead and idealized husband, Ferrante; and the rime spirituali (spiritual rhymes), which are religious, even mystical, in content. The first section prepares the thematic and stylistic terrain for the latter: the love lyrics often reference the poet's desire to follow her beloved to heaven, where she can contemplate the beloved's beauties. This progression from human love to divine reflects different compositional times as well; the love poetry was written before the devotional pieces, in keeping with Colonna's gradual conversion to militant evangelism. There is also a third lyric grouping, the rime epistolari (epistolary rhymes), which belong to a typical Renaissance genre: encomiastic letters in verse addressed to friends, acquaintances, or figures of authority. This is Colonna's shortest and most commonplace surviving category of poems.

The majority of the Rime was composed after the premature death of Ferrante d'Avalos, although contemporary documents praise several love lyrics Colonna dedicated to her living spouse and mention other poems now lost. One of the few surviving early works is an “Epistola” dated 1512. Written in terza rima, a rhyme scheme used for epistolary purposes in the Renaissance, this capitolo (“Excelso mio signor,” My most excellent lord) is a missive sent to her husband after the battle of Ravenna, during which d'Avalos performed bravely but was captured. Joseph Gibaldi defines this composition “at once a humanistic exercise and a passionate cri de coeur,” imitative of Ovid's Heroides, a series of lyric letters directed to absent lovers by anguished women of ancient history and mythology. As the critic notes, this poem is not typical of Colonna's representation of her husband but addresses the pain that their separation, his military ambition, and her loneliness caused the poet. In her many later love sonnets, Colonna presents a far different picture of her marriage and an idealized version of her dead spouse, who had not been very attentive or faithful in reality. In these poems, there is a clear movement from her initial grief for his death to the exalted praise of his virtues and person.

Pescara's lyric persona is derived from Francesco Petrarca's rhymes, particularly the poems written after Laura's death that constitute the final section of his Canzoniere. In her desire to celebrate her dead spouse and mourn his passing, Colonna models her deceased beloved on the attributes of the dead Laura, borrowing metaphors, motifs, analogies, and themes from the model to construct her own lyric subject. Like Laura, Colonna's beloved becomes a spiritual guide, an ethereal figure who personifies all good. All his human foibles and defects are canceled. Naturally, in emulating a male-oriented code, Colonna is at a disadvantage as a female writer. To maintain gender difference and literary acceptability, she emphasizes her subject's maleness, stressing the virile qualities of the deceased in contrast to her yearning and suffering femininity. He is the great warrior gifted with wisdom, prudence, courage, and nobility; she the loving dazzled wife. What emerges is not a man but an idol. In other sonnets, D'Avalos attains apotheosis, transformed into her “beautiful sun” while her own existence is the realm of “bitter eternal grief” only his brilliance can illumine.

What emerges from Colonna's representation of her lamented beloved is the spiritual and Christian element inherent in Petrarchan love rather than its sensual and worldly quality. In her best verse, there is a sincerity and depth of emotion that rings true even within the limitations of a codified lexicon and thematics. There is bereavement for a lost love and the void of a life without its key player; as one of her most famous sonnets declares, “I only write to vent my inner pain.” From the conventionality of many of Colonna's sonnets there emerges the poetry of pain and fidelity beyond the grave, proposing an honorable exemplar of devoted wifehood that both contemporary and future readers interpreted as the embodiment of perfect womanhood. It is a lyric universe where love is married to mourning.

Colonna's world is expressed through the codified discourse of Petrarchism, which she adapts to suit her unique experiences. For example, the Petrarchan anniversary poem, typical of the canon, is manipulated by various emulators to define the varying nature of the love experience. Colonna's anniversary sonnets commemorate the death of the beloved and signal her continued loyalty to his memory. She represents herself as the ever-faithful wife in perfect keeping with Renaissance expectations of feminine behavior: chaste in thought and deed, faithful in love, devout in spirit. Other clear borrowings include a predilection for certain Petrarchan conceits, such as the representation of love in oxymoronic terms, the emphasis on the power of the beloved's eyes, or the metaphor of the boat caught in raging seas to symbolize the persona's state of spiritual or emotional insecurity or the soul's vulnerability to temptation. Colonna variously presents her lyric self as a sad, flightless bird, the pilotless boat, the mourning survivor—all images taken from the master's repertory.

Memory functions as a powerful motif in Colonna's love lyrics. Through her rhymes, she can concurrently remember and commemorate. Her works keep her beloved subject alive in her memory and for posterity. The poet constantly compares the different environments of her two existential times: before and after the death of the beloved. The past emerges as the incomparable time of joy, closed to her by death. The present becomes the place of regret and recollection: the prison of life. Thought allows her to bridge the abyss of death separating her from the ideal lover and husband she has lost. Colonna's verse consistently speaks to the attraction of death, the promise of reunion in a better world, the impossibility of finding psychological peace deprived of his strength. To forget is to reject the world of sacred love and enter into darkness and confusion, to set forth on the road of error. Yet the Marchesa does not offer a poetry of impotence or inferiority; her pain inspires the quest for moral improvement, spiritual ascent, and artistic expression. The lyric persona of the lover seeks to rejoin the ideal by becoming its equal; beyond her suffering lies the promise of an eternity of love if she proves worthy. The love expressed is spiritual, the merger of worthy souls in which the materiality of the human condition functions as an encumbrance and a millstone pulling the lover to earth. The movement upward, to the brilliance emanating from the beloved “sun,” underscores Colonna's debt to Neoplatonic thought.

Neoplatonism is a significant contributor to the construction of the ideal beloved and the perfect love. Renaissance literature was strongly influenced by the theories and conceptualizations of Neoplatonism, a philosophy based on the Christian interpretation of Plato and his later disciples. Colonna's works are imbued with the elements of Neoplatonic discourse, a philosophy that clearly appealed to her profound spirituality and corresponded to her deeply held religious beliefs and Christian ethos. In this philosophical context, D'Avalos the lyric subject becomes a rung in the Neoplatonic ladder to God: his virtue emanates from the true good that is associated with God, as human love gives way to divine in Colonna's verse. The beloved's attractions are spirit, not flesh; the beauty that issues from him is cleansed of the diminishing magnetism of the inferior senses. The love Colonna sings is as ideal as her beloved. Purified of the inferior senses and their inherent attachment to the physical world, such a love is clearly Platonic, meant to foster moral elevation rather than worldly gratification. In Neoplatonic terms, it is an “honest” love—sacred, not profane. The union desired by the poet joins souls, not bodies.

As Colonna aged, her poetry shifted from love for a man to love for God, yet the two major groupings of her poems are connected structurally and metaphorically. The “sun” of the beloved becomes the divine light: both illuminate her, guiding her from the darkness to the higher elevations of spiritual life. Christ replaces the dead husband as Colonna's lyric subject, and the sense of loss elicited by the death of the beloved gives way to the celebration of the religious experience. The poet finds a solid rock in Jesus, to which she can secure her Petrarchan “fragile barque.” Indeed, in sonnets included in the 1538 edition of the love lyrics, Colonna poetically declares her intention to find inspiration in the crucified Christ rather than in Apollo or in the nine circles of Paradise rather than the nine Muses. It is a clear statement of poetics, in which the Renaissance writer declares her new source to be her faith rather than the classical heritage.

Colonna's sacred rhymes are a reflection of her profound spirituality and rich devotional life. Through the language of the Petrarchan canon, the poet expresses her moral quandaries, spiritual anguish, and desire for forgiveness from a merciful Savior who died for humanity. Through the imagery of Neoplatonism, she defines the soul's ascent to the greater good, the search for perfection through the love of God. Colonna's sacred verse captures her mystical tendencies and is connected to her evangelism, as in the poet's recurring use of the theme of Christ's Passion, to which she also devoted a long composition known as a trionfo. Colonna proposes the religious ideal of the imitation of Christ in keeping with her desire for spiritual betterment. Doctrinaire more than passionate in much of her pious writing, Colonna has been criticized for her tendency to intellectualize faith, as in her theological discussions of salvation.

There is no doubt that Colonna's poetry is conventional, but she demonstrates considerable stylistic control over her material, as she capably wields the Petrarchan and Neoplatonic codes, thereby evoking the highest praise of her contemporaries. On the other hand, modern scholars often find her writing too logical, impersonal, and dry. Moreover, given Colonna's habit of transferring phrases, even entire lines, from the Petrarchan source to her own works, some literary critics view her compositions as a Petrarchan collage of borrowed language, ideas, and motifs, Nevertheless, Vittoria Colonna manages to project her noble character, intellectual power, and spirituality through her imitative strategies, leaving a unique imprint on Renaissance Petrarchism.

In addition to a notable lyric output, Vittoria Colonna also produced one of the most interesting Renaissance epistolaries to survive. A diligent letter writer, her correspondents provide a cross-section of the movers and shakers of her world, including her great friend Michelangelo Buonarotti, the questionable “scourge of princes” Pietro Aretino, the talented French royal Marguerite de Navarre, leading Catholic reformers, and celebrated writers. These letters also afford glimpses of her exceptional mind, profound morality, and religious views. Colonna's epistolary is an important sociocultural document that touches on the concerns, taste, convictions, and attitudes of her class and time; it also offers a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary individual whose place in literary history is well assured.

SURVEY OF CRITICISM

The admiration that greeted the woman Vittoria Colonna in life did not lessen through the centuries, culminating in historian Jacob Burckhart's influential declaration that she had been the most famous woman of Italy, with the reputation of a saint. This respectful depiction of the historical Colonna is expanded in several nineteenth- and twentieth-century biographies, including Maud Jerrold's (1969) extensive depiction of the poet's Renaissance circle and environment. A similar presentation is made in Suzanne Therault's (1968) book on Colonna and her coterie; this French volume also dedicates considerable space to an overview of Colonna's poetry and literary criticism dedicated to her works. Colonna's poetry did not maintain the same level of popular acclaim it had achieved in her own time. Her Petrarchan and Neoplatonic verse did not appeal to baroque and arcadian tastes and was set aside until the rise of European Enlightenment, when works by women experienced a period of literary reevaluation. In the Romantic period, Colonna's poetry went through several new editions, deriving in part from the era's fascination with unusual historical figures, particularly women.

In the twentieth century, the general acclaim for Colonna's person and achievements underwent some critical reappraisal. In her book-length study of women writers (1930), Jolanda De Blasi points to chinks in the Marchesa's exemplary armor. Skeptical of the authenticity of Colonna's love for the unfaithful and somewhat disreputable D'Avalos, De Blasi challenges the poet's sincerity, labeling the lyrics a “Canzoniere of posthumous love” that suffers from hyperbole and coldness, more a literary exercise than a sincere expression of emotion. But De Blasi's opinion of the devotional poetry is enthusiastic, defining it as the best verse composed by a woman in the sixteenth century, if lacking Dante's power.

Many scholars tend to emphasize the woman over the poet, as is often the case with female writers. An extreme example of this tendency is Francesco Galdi's (1898) “scientific” psychological analysis of Colonna; Galdi studies Colonna's biography and love lyrics as elements of a case history, deducing that the verse indicates a state of neurasthenia, as confirmed in the poet's systematic deformation of Pescara's character, attributed to Colonna's lack of critical judgment. However, in the last century there has been an increasingly serious examination of Colonna the writer's themes and style. One of the first solid studies is Rocco Mazzone's (1897) careful analysis of the Rime that explores Colonna's sources during the three phases of her writing, from the early assimilation of classical works through the Petrarchism of her middle period to the religious inspiration of her maturity. Mazzone does a detailed stylistic analysis of the poetry and its sources, pointing out the Petrarchan subtexts of the Renaissance compositions.

Other scholars focus on Colonna's ties to Catholic reformists and her religious experience, as expressed in her lyrics. Roland Bainton (1971) and G. K. Brown (1933) emphasize the Marchesa's historical role in their studies of Counter-Reformational thought, while Mila Mazzetti's (1973) article stresses the relationship between life and art in Colonna's devotional poetry. On a more literary note Rinaldina Russell (1992) analyzes the shift from love lyric to devotional verse in the Rime, represented by the “poetic image of the soul's ascent to God.”

Another critical attitude is gender oriented, exploring women poets' rapport to the male-authored canon. Luigi Baldacci (1975) states that Vittoria Colonna's writing ideally expressed the intellectual tone and taste of her century but is limited by this very fact: grounded in the cultural environment of her day, the poet does not appeal to modern tastes because of her lack of warmth and excess of logic. Giulio Ferroni (1978) sees Colonna as the voice of courtly society, from a feminine point of view; her poetry stresses its inherent dignity as she assumes a literary role that she believes to be profoundly serious and exemplary. In her study of female Petrarchism, Luciana Borsetto (1983) offers the myth of Echo and Narcissus as the metaphor for the female poet's forced reproduction of the canon, singling out Colonna as emblematic of this practice. Borsetto suggests that Vittoria Colonna's female individuality is submerged by her Petrarchan contents and form, thus becoming no more than the mirror of her male model. In the current critical environment, there is no doubt that many more scholars will fall under the continuing spell of Vittoria Colonna, one of the most extraordinary women of an exceptional time, the Italian Renaissance.

Bibliography

Works by Vittoria Colonna

Rime de la Divina Vittoria Colonna Marchesa di Pescara, nuovamente stampate. Parma: Viottis, 1538.

Tutte le Rime della illustrissima ed eccellentissima Signora Vittoria Colonna marchesa di Pescara, con l'esposizione del Signor Rinaldo Corso nuovamente mandate in luce da Girolamo Ruscelli. Venice: Sessa, 1558.

Rime di Vittoria Colonna marchesana di Pescara corrette ed illustrate con la vita della medesima scritta da G.B. Rota. Bergamo: Lancellotti, 1760.

Le Rime di Vittoria Colonna corrette su i testi a penna e pubblicate con la vita della medesima dal cavaliere P.E. Visconti. Si aggiungono le poesie omesse nelle precedenti edizioni e le inedite. Rome: Salviucci, 1840.

Rime e Lettere. Ed. G. E. Saltini. Florence: Barbera, 1860.

Carteggio. Ed. Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller. Turin: Loescher, 1889.

Carteggio. Ed. Ermanno Ferrero, Giuseppe Müller, and Domenico Tondi. Expanded 2d ed. Turin: Loescher, 1892.

Rime di tre gentildonne del secolo XVI: Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Gambara. Ed. Olindo Guerrini. Milan: Sonzogno, 1882.

Le più belle pagine di Gaspara Stampa, Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Isabella di Morra. Ed. Giuseppe Toffanin. Milan: Treves, 1935.

Rime. Ed. Alan Bullock. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1982.

Translations of Vittoria Colonna

Allen, Beverly, Muriel Kittel, and Keala Jane Jewell. The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present. New York: The Feminist Press, 1986. Bilingual.

De' Lucchi, Lorna. An Anthology of Italian Poems. 13th-19th Century. New York: Biblio & Tannen, 1922/1967. Bilingual.

Tusiani, Joseph. Italian Poets of the Renaissance. Long Island City, N.Y.: Baroque Press, 1971.

Studies of Vittoria Colonna

Bainton, Roland H. “Vittoria Colonna.” In Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy, 201-18. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971.

Borsetto, Luciana. “Narciso ed Eco. Figura e scrittura nella lirica femminile del Cinquecento: esemplificazioni ed appunti.” In Nel cerchio della luna: Figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo, 171-233. Ed. Marina Zancan. Venice: Marsilio, 1983.

Brown, G. K. “Vittoria Colonna.” In Italy and the Reformation to 1550, 235-39. Oxford: 1933.

Bullock, Allen. “Vittoria Colonna and Francesco Maria Molza: Conflict in Communication.” Italian Studies 32 (1977): 41-51.

———. “Vittoria Colonna: Note e aggiunte alla edizione critica del 1982.” Giornale storico della letteratura itiliana 162 (1985): 407-419.

De Blasi, Jolanda. Le scrittrici italiane dalle origini al 1800. Florence: Nemi, 1930.

Dyer, Diane. “Vittora Colonna's Friendship with the English Cardinal Reginald Pole.” Riscontri 7, 1-2 (1985): 45-58.

Galdi, Francesco. Vittoria Colonna dal lato della nevro-psicopatologia. Portici: Spedalieri, 1898.

Gibaldi, Joseph. “Vittoria Colonna: Child, Woman and Poet.” In Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, 22-46. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Includes translations of poetry.

Jerrold, Maud F. Vittoria Colonna 1906. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y., 1969.

Jung, Eva-Maria. “Vittoria Colonna: Between Reformation and Counter-Reformation.” Review of Religion 15 (1950-1951): 144-59.

McAuliffe, Dennis. “Vittoria Colonna and Renaissance Poetics, Convention and Society.” In Il Rinascimento: Aspetti e problemi attuali, 531-42. Ed. Vittore Branca, Claudio Griggio, Marco Pecoraro, Elisanna Pecoraro, Gilberto Pizzamiglio, and Eros Sequi. Florence: Olschki, 1982.

———. “Neoplatonism in Vittoria Colonna's Poetry: From the Secular to the Divine.” In Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, 101-12. Ed. Konrad Eisenbichler and Olga Zorzi Pugliese. Toronto: Dovehouse, 1986.

Mazzetti, Mila. “La poesia come vocazione morale: Vittoria Colonna.” Rassegna della letteratura italiana 77 (1973): 58-99.

Mazzone, Rocco. Vittoria Colonna e il suo canzoniere. Marsala: Martoglio, 1897.

Russell, Rinaldina. “The Mind's Pursuit of the Divine. A Survey of Secular and Religious Themes in Vittoria Colonna's Sonnets.” Forum Italicum 26, 1 (Spring 1992): 14-27.

Therault, Suzanne. Un Cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna chatelaine d'Ischia. Paris/Florence: Didier/Sansoni Antiquariato, 1968.

Toscano, Tobia. “Due ‘allievi’ di Vittoria Colonna: Luigi Tansillo e Alfonso d'Avalos.” Critica Letteraria 16 (1988): 739-73.

Other Works

Baldacci, Luigi, ed. Lirici del Cinquecento. 2d ed. Milano: Longanesi, 1975.

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. New York: Harper & Row, 1929/1958.

Ferroni, Giulio ed. Poesia italiana: Il Cinquecento. Milan: Garzanti, 1978.