SOURCE: Bassanese, Fiora A. “Vittoria Colonna, Christ and Gender.” Il Veltro 40, nos. 1-2 (1996): 53-57.

[In this essay, published in an abridged version in 1996, but never before published in the complete version below, Bassanese explores the influence of cultural and literary gender norms on Colonna's interpretation of herself in her poems on love and spirituality.]

Vittoria Colonna, woman and poet, ideally suited Renaissance taste. Her unimpeachable virtue, talent, noble blood, and equally noble spirit distinguished her from other great ladies, making her the living embodiment of a cultural ideal. This elevation of Colonna to a paragon of femininity is in keeping with the Cinquecento's penchant for establishing exemplary models. She too is a primum and an optimum, the best of women: put forward as the model to imitate, she is declared inimitable. Colonna's poetry achieved similar approbation. Like the woman, it too was noble, virtuous, and elegant. The first edition of the Rime appeared in 1538, rapidly succeeded by twenty more in the sixteenth century alone, a testimony to its appeal and suitability.¹ The resulting eminence of Vittoria Colonna, woman and poet, is epitomized in a famous passage of the Orlando Furioso. Ariosto notes Colonna's uniqueness among women who “lasciando l'ago e 'l panno, / son con le Muse” (leaving needle and cloth, are with the Muses), as well as her ability to immortalize both herself and her subjects in a “dolce stil” (sweet style). In lyric hyperbole, the Marchesa is declared Apollo's “candida sorella” (pure sister), a new sun to adorn the heavens, and a true victor in keeping with her name, “di trofei sempre e di trionfi ornata” (always adorned with trophies and triumphs). What further distinguishes Colonna in Ariosto's eyes and, by extension, in the eyes of their contemporaries, is the convergence of style and character. If the Marchesa di Pescara is praised for her lyric accomplishments, such accomplishments originate in her impeccable behavior as a woman or, more exactly, as a widow. Ariosto's admiration focuses on Colonna “sì casta mogliere” (such a chaste wife), whose verse sings not herself but her beloved and “l'eterno onor che [gli] si debbe” (and the eternal honor owed him) (Canto XXVII). Ariosto's ideological discourse is clear: Colonna's exceptionality is grounded in her character and virtue more than in her artistic or intellectual abilities.

Ariosto's assessment of Vittoria Colonna is derived from long held assumptions about sexual roles and behavioral models. These dominant cultural codes and the constraints of Petrarchism and Neoplatonism also condition Colonna's self-representation and influence her construction of a lyric self and its male counterpart, that is, the traditional figures of the lover and the beloved. This essay will explore the influence of cultural and literary gender norms on both the rime amorose and the rime spirituali, touching upon issues of self-representation, agency, and idealization.

Unwittingly, the renown historian Jacob Burckhart illustrates the enduring impact of gender on the interpretation and evaluation of literature. While championing the sexual equality of the 1500s, the nineteenth century historian goes on to judge his subjects in biased language, rich in its implications. Introduced as “the most famous woman of Italy,” Vittoria Colonna is accorded such primacy based on her attainment of “the reputation of a saint” (380). Colonna's verse is celebrated for its “manly tone”; her poems contain such precision, definition, and rejection of both sentiment and dilettantism “that we should not hesitate to attribute them to male authors, if we had not clear external evidence to prove the contrary” (390). The implications are clear: women's writing finds approbation when it is de-sexualized, cleansed of all female signs. For a woman writing poetry in the 16th century, this conundrum is complicated by the dominance of Petrarchism, a manifestly male canon. Recently, scholars have approached Colonna's successful emulation of the Petrarchan and Neoplatonic lexicons—which garnered her much acclaim in her own time—as a forfeiture of her personal and literary identity. In an excellent study of female imitative strategies within Petrarchism, Luciana Borsetto proposes the myth of Echo and Narcissus as a metaphor for the woman poet's forced reproduction of the canon. Colonna's experience is cited as emblematic of a practice that metamorphoses female poets into Petrarchan mirrors: “confuse letteralmente con lui, sono diventate lui” (literally confused with him, they become him) (Borsetto 195).

A reading of the Rime suggests, however, that Colonna herself neither denied nor disregarded biological identity while creating her lyric persona and its traditional counterpart, the beloved. Rather, she turned to culturally established gender traits and integrated them into the Petrarchan canon. In the rime amorose,² composed after the premature death of Ferrante d'Avalos, the poet utilizes her dead husband's background to construct his lyric persona. A soldier by temperament, training, and choice, d'Avalos could embody the notions of martial virility found in classical texts and propagated by Humanism. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the Epistola penned to her living husband in 1512, she compares him to archetypal classical representatives of military prowess: “la vostra gran virtù s'è dimostrata / d'un Ettor, d'un Achille” (your great virtus belongs to a Hector or to an Achilles) (RAD, 1 [RA refers to the rime amorose portion of Rime; RAD refers to rime amorose disperse within the Bullock edition of Rime]). The representation of the beloved in heroic terms is maintained in many of the poems of loss. Rime amorose 5, for example, highlights this archetypal virtù, by stockpiling martial terminology, such as “superba insegna” (proud sign), “ardire” (boldness), “la forte … vittrice mano” (a bold, victorious hand), “il vigor” (vigor), “gli sdegni” (indignation), “l'ire” (rages), “l'invitto valor” (unconquered valor), “virtù, celerità, forza ed ingegno” (virtue, swiftness, strength and genius), “la chiara fama” (noble fame), “la gloria bella” (great glory), “'l merto” (merit), and, finally, his “opre divine” (divine works). In short, the beloved is represented as a man of action whose accomplishments are equal to “le belle opre d'Enea superbe e sole” (the great, superb, unique deeds of Aeneas) (RA 24). Colonna's praise is hyperbolic, suggesting the construction of an ideal, rather than a real, subject, more archetype than individual. Like an idol, the figure of the dead mate is static and symbolic rather than living and individualized.

Recalling Castiglione's personification of the gentleman-knight, Colonna's beloved is an exemplary man of arms, worthy of all recognition and honor, “che è il vero premio delle virtuose fatiche” (the true prize of virtuous labor) (Cortegiano, Book One, XVIII). Like the courtier, he too is a construct, composed of socially endorsed qualities. The complementary female ideal is equally based on established models of propriety, acceptability, and suitability. Like the donna di palazzo (palace lady), Colonna's lover is constructed on gendered expectations for female behavior in a manner that recalls positive role models little changed from antiquity to the Renaissance and revisited in the series of exemplary biographies proposed in Book Three of the Cortegiano, a text the Marchesa knew and appreciated. As Castiglione notes, “non è omo tanto procace ed insolente, che non abbia riverenzia a quelle che sono estimate bone ed oneste; perchè quella gravità temperata di sapere e bontà è quasi un scudo contra la insolenzia e bestialità dei prosuntuosi (no man is so provactive or insolent that he does not revere those judged good and honest; that seriousness tempered with wisdom and goodness is almost a shield against the insolence and bestiality of the presumptuous) (Book Three, V). It is a woman of sapere, bontà, gravità, and onestà³ that emerges from the pages of the rime amorose. To these qualities, Colonna adds the two foundations of female virtue: chastity and fidelity.

While Colonna's beloved personifies masculine virtus, her self-image is built on virtuous femininity. She represents herself as the ever-faithful wife: chaste in thought and deed, true in love, devout in spirit. Colonna dresses her persona in Petrarchan metaphors: sad flightless bird, storm-tossed boat, mourning survivor. All serve to highlight her femininity by stressing her dependency and fragility. At the same time, to maintain the onestà required of all good women, her self-representation is cleansed of any erotic overtones, breaking the sexual nexus of the Petrarchan love experience.⁴ In emulating a male-oriented code, Colonna is at a disadvantage. To maintain gender difference without loss of either literary acceptability or personal reputation, the poet emphasizes her subject's maleness, accentuating the virile qualities of the deceased in contrast to her yearning and suffering femininity. He is the great champion endowed with wisdom, courage, and nobility; she the loving, dazzled, grief-stricken widow. The Petrarchan conventionality of Colonna's sonnets house an equally conventional exemplar of devoted wifehood which both contemporary and future readers interpreted as the embodiment of perfect Renaissance womanhood. Colonna's lyric identity differs little from her public persona, seconding Ariosto's depiction of Vittoria the chaste widow-poet, consecrated to glorifying the memory of a perfect spouse. In point of fact, the Marchesa is contributing to the creation of her personal myth, modelling her lyric self after the same socially endorsed ideals that appear to motivate her conduct.

Unlike other petrarchiste, Vittoria Colonna does not employ her sex to submit a poetry of impotence or inferiority. If anything, the issue of gender is somewhat neutralized by the poet's emphasis on the lover's moral improvement or spiritual ascent. The persona seeks to rejoin the ideal by becoming its equal; beyond her suffering lies the promise of an eternity of love if she is proven worthy. Therefore, the love poetry makes repeated reference to the protagonist's pura fé, cor fedele, martiri, mortal casto amor, casta fiamma, mestizia, and tormenti (pure faith or fidelity; in a catalogue of formulaic attributes). If these self-descriptors are inherently passive (i. e. feminine), Colonna's role as writer is not. Alongside the figure of the chaste lover, the Rime contains numerous references to the active co-existence of the writer, which Borsetto calls “un secondo modo di essere della rappresentazione” (the representation's second way of being): “l'immagine passiva della virtuosa risulta infatti contigua ad una immagine attiva di scrivente” (the passive image of the virtuous woman is actually contiguous to the active image of the writer) (205). By writing, Colonna implicitly rejects one of the principle qualities praised in women: the silence that symbolizes patriarchal collaboration. As Sperone Speroni states in Il dialogo della cura familiare, women must be like the nymph Echo, “la quale mai da sé incomincia a parlare, ma sempre mai alla voce proposta tutta pronta risponde” (who never starts to speak herself but always quickly answers to the voice proposed) (1535).

Having assimilated the Petrarchan-Neoplatonic style in vogue, Colonna was unaware that such integration contained the seeds of self-betrayal. The burden of imitation imposed on all lyric poets made it difficult to evolve novel situations outside the patterns established by the model, much less to give an independent voice to female experience. Thus, the Petrarchan poems “In morte di Madonna Laura” offered the imitator an acceptable framework in which to construct her representation of grief and commemoration of the deceased. Colonna models her subject on the attributes of the dead Laura, borrowing metaphors, motifs, analogies, and themes. The love object is repeatedly indicated by descriptors such as sole, lume, luce (sun, light) that denote the beloved as a projection of the spiritual realm. Such terms are also gender-neutral, readily commutable from female to male. Like Laura, Colonna's beloved becomes an ethereal guide who personifies good, having shed any human defects. The spiritual and Christian element inherent in Petrarchan love, rather than its sensual and worldly qualities, dominates. The movement upwards, to the brilliance emanating from her beloved “sun,” underscores Colonna's debt to Neoplatonic thought. Rinaldina Russell has noted the connection between the sonnets celebratory of d'Avalos and the theories of love proposed by Pietro Bembo in Gli Asolani. In the universe of art, the d'Avalos marriage is depicted as a bond made by “Heaven, Nature and Love” in the guise of “honest love,” inspired by the harmony emanating from the beloved's virtue and beauty (15-16). It is in keeping with the Petrarchan lexicon that beauty should be attributed to the object of love, rather than to the female lover, counter to the cultural dictate that woman's greatest attribute is beauty. In this manner, the identities of Laura and d'Avalos merge. Sexual biology appears an irrelevant property in spiritualized beings.

Neoplatonic discourse appealed to Colonna's profound spirituality and corresponded to her deep-seated faith. In this context, d'Avalos as lyric subject becomes a rung in the ladder to God: his virtue emanates from the true Good; his beauty is the manifestation of a superior soul. Colonna declares that if Nature's “chiari ingegni” (noble thinkers) and if those in possession of “mente pura” (pure mind), “fede vera” (true faith) and “lume santo” (holy light) “avesser del mio Sol mirato i rai, / quei primi avrian da sue grand'opre inteso / che reggeva il bel corpo alma immortale” (would have gazed upon the rays of my Sun, they would have understood from his great deeds that his handsome body bore an immortal soul) (RA 77). The heroic measure of the beloved exalted in earlier poems lends itself to the construction of the beloved as a great soul, an image far better suited to the poet's growing religious fervour and removed from any erotic connotations. Having translated her love from a conjugal union into a union of blessed souls, Colonna passes from the love for man to the love for God in the rime spirituali. In the process, the iconology reserved for the dead spouse is transferred to the eternal Christ. The metaphoric “sun” representing the beloved gives way to the divine light of the godhead with conceptual ease. Both Neoplatonic husband and loving Christ illuminate, elevate, and guide, easing her pain and defending her fragility. “In her monolinear system Ferrante and Christ have the same structural function” (Russell 24) and the assumption of a new beloved requires no major alteration in either her lyric identity or canonical idiom.

Mingling the language of mysticism and Neoplatonism, Colonna proposes a new husband, a new love, and a new form of marriage, one in which “il caro Sposo” (the dear Bridegroom) will find her “lieta e presta / per onorar-Lo reverente onesta” (glad and willing to honor him reverently and honestly) (RS 8 [RS refers to the rime spirituali portion of Rime]). The attributes of Christ's bride differ little from those of the grieving widow. She remains steadfastly devoted to “le nozze eterne” (eternal marriage) with her “Sol chiaro e beato” (noble and blessed Sun) to whom she appears “saggia, prudente” (wise, prudent), her heart armed “di puro santo amor, di viva fede” (with pure holy love, with living faith) (RS 7). Humility, faith, and chaste desire continue to denote Colonna's lyric self-representation, appropriately adjusted to accommodate a far more responsive, albeit divine, groom. In a variation on the Petrarchan topos, love continues to inspire art but this celestial beloved outshines and improves upon the human model. The military heroism of the knight is replaced by Christ's militant love: “di nova carità S'arma ed accende / quando un forte guerrier pregia e corona!” (armed and lit with new charity, as a strong warrior is honored and crowned) (RS 15). As the “vero Duce” (true leader) (RS 88), Christ finds victory and “alta gloria” (noble glory) in his humility and death (see RS 30), which lead to eternal rewards. It is not too farfetched to conclude that d'Avalos' earthly accomplishments were merely Pyrrhic victories in comparison.

If the beloved of the rime amorose can be categorized, first, as an archetypal representation of masculine virtus and, secondly, as a Neoplatonic paragon, the figuration of Christ is a more complex proposition, indebted to devotional practices, the literary canon, and the poet's personal vision. At times, Colonna's “vero Amante” (true Lover) (RSD 12 [RSD refers to rime spirituali disperse within the Bullock edition of Rime]) exhibits gender attributes that the dominant cultural codes would characterize as feminine. In the rime spirituali the figure of Jesus occasionally assumes a maternal identification. He is nurturing and protective, providing “nutrimento” (nourishment) for the lover (RS 20), His blood substituting for mother's milk. Colonna's chosen metaphor is Christ as parenting bird, “per cari figli entro i Suoi nidi / col dolce sangue Suo ne ciba sempre, / e dal fero angue n'assicura e asconde” (in Whose nests, the dear children are nourished with His sweet blood, secured and hidden from the wild) (RS 36). Another sonnet demonstrates that a maternal, not paternal, identity is sought in the nurturing embrace of this avian love, declared in typical Petrarchan fashion a “dolce e soave giogo” (sweet and mild yoke) (RS 54): “Qual digiuno augellin, che vede ed ode / batter l'ali a la madre intorno quando / li reca il nudrimento” (Like a hungry little bird who sees and hears his mother's wings beating round him, bringing nourishment) (RS 46). The tercets of rime spirituali 77, in praise of the crucified Saviour, epitomize the attribution of prevalently feminine traits to the divine beloved:

          Pazienza, umiltà, vero obidire
con l'altre alme virtù furon le stelle
ch'ornao il sol de la Sua caritade,
          onde ne l'aspra punga e questa e quelle
fecer più chiara doppo 'l bel morire
la gloria de l'eterna Sua bontade.

(Patience, humility, true obedience, alongside other spiritual virtues, are the stars that adorned the sun of His charity; in the bitter battle these have rendered the glory of His eternal goodness brighter yet, after a good death.)

Colonna submits features that traditionally constitute womanly excellence: the patience, humility and obedience of the Virgin or of Griselda, to name two notable exemplars. References to battle and glory also function allusively, using Colonna's own rime amorose as a subtext, leading to a contrasting of the two “suns” of her lyric universe. Similarly, mentions of goodness and caritas allude to the Neoplatonic experience of heterosexual love as well as the Christian experience of God. Inevitably, the virile warrior of the love poems suffers in the comparison. In Jesus, Colonna finds not only the perfect beloved but a lover as faithful as herself, a solid rock to which she can secure her stormtossed fragile barque. The feminization of the Christ figure functions as an instrument for merging lover and beloved through their shared attributes, rendering gender and alterity meaningless to the spiritual experience.

Having internalized her culture's gendered notions of propriety and virtue, Vittoria Colonna sought to reproduce them in her life. Emerging as the Renaissance's version of ideal womanhood, the poet constructed a lyric identity that embodied her strong moral beliefs and lived up to the highest of social expectations for her sex. By doing so, she represented herself, and her beloved, in archetypal terms, as befits any exemplary figure, albeit within the constraints of Petrarchism and Neoplatonism. That Colonna's paradigms were culturally and biologically determined merely justifies feminist theoretician Teresa De Lauretis's observation that “the female subject is always constructed and defined in gender, starting from gender” (14). Like all of us, Vittoria Colonna was a product of her times.

Notes

1. Colonna's success as a writer is obvious when compared to Gaspara Stampa's Rime, with one posthumous edition in the 1500s quickly forgotten for two centuries.

2. Editions of Colonna's poetry after 1547 are divided in two parts: love poems and spiritual compositions. The significant versions of the Rime include the 1558 edition prepared by Rinaldo Corso, that offers a commentary as well as variants of the poems; Giambatista Rota's 1760 edition was the first to include all Colonna's known verse in one volume; the 1840 corrected edition by Pietro Ercole Visconti forms the basis for many modern publications; and the exceptional 1982 critical edition by Alan Bullock includes a panoply of notes, bibliographical references, a history of the manuscript and published sources, synoptic tables, and variants. The Bullock edition includes almost four hundred poems, mostly sonnets. All quotations used in this essay come from the Bullock edition and will be referenced by the editor's headings and numbering. Translations are my own.

3. These attributes can be defined in a multiplicity of ways. Sapere is knowledge, wisdom, awareness. Bontà suggests spiritual and moral good as well as kindness while gravità proposes decorum as well as seriousness of purpose and manner. Onestà when referred to women implies sincerity and honesty but also decency, nobility, social status, and chastity.

4. One notable exception is Colonna's epistola addressed to her husband in 1512, in which she refers to her sense of physical and sexual abandonment. D'Avalos died in 1525.

Works Cited

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. Ed. Marina Zancan. Venezia: Marsilio, 1983. Pp. 171-233.

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. New York 1929-1958.

Colonna, Vittoria. Rime. Ed. Alan Bullock. Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1982.

De Lauretis, Teresa, ed. Feminist Studies/Critical Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 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.

McAuliffe, Dennis J. “Neoplatonism in Vittoria Colonna's Poetry: From the Secular to the Divine” in Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism. Eds. Konrad Eisenbichler & Olga Zorzi Pugliese. Toronto: Dovehouse, 1986. Pp. 101-112.

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.

Schiesari, Juliana. “In Praise of Virtuous Women? For a Genealogy of Gender Morals in Renaissance Italy.” Annali d'Italianistica, 7 (1989): 66–87.

Therault, Suzanne. Un Cénacle humaniste de la Renaissance autour de Vittoria Colonna chatelaine d’Ischia. Firenze: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1968.