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

[In the following essay, Bainton surveys Colonna's life and career, examining how she gives voice in her experiences, as well as discussing her friendship with Michelangelo, and exploring her Christian faith and reaction to the Roman Inquisition.]

Vittoria Colonna is best known of all the Italian women treated here because of the inspiration which she afforded to Michelangelo. That inspiration was religious, and her religion must be understood before the subject can be approached. She was another of the high born ladies of the Renaissance, educated in Latin as well as in Italian.¹ A daughter of the house of Colonna, she was married at 17 to the Spanish hidalgo D'Avalos, the Marchese of Pescara. The marriage of 18 years was but briefly romantic, for he was often absent in the wars and faithless to his vows. After his death she poured forth sonnets adulating his memory. Was this a love that would not let him go or a literary affectation? At any rate her verses as well as her station made her an admired figure among the literati. The great stylist in Latin and Italian, Pietro Bembo, highly regarded her skill, while she acknowledged her inability to emulate his own.² Castiglione submitted to her judgment a manuscript of his Cortegione.³

Vittoria had as much reason to be disquieted over her role as a feted Marchesa in the world of genteel courtesy and brutal strife as did Caterina Cibo. The Colonnas were traditionally at war with the Orsini and were embroiled in the wars of the papacy and the empire, with a leaning to the latter. Vittoria's brother Ascanio had a feud with the pope because of Ascanio's refusal to allow his peasants to abide by a papal monopoly on the sale of salt. The Colonnas made a raid on Rome and Ascanio was repulsed and restricted to Naples. Vittoria told him that war could not be justified over a matter of 30 cows.⁴ Her sonnets complain bitterly alike of war and papal corruption. For example:

When the breath of God that moved above the tide
Fans the embers of my smouldering state,
And the winds of God begin to dissipate
The fetid stench of the church, his bride,
Then the swaggering knights prepare to ride.
The war begins. They gloat and cannot wait.
They think they are the masters of their fate
And would display their valor far and wide.
Then within they hear God's trumpet blow,
And they, whose gods were goblets and a crest,
Appalled by death, their headlong charge arrest.
They cannot lift the vizier to the rays
Which penetrate the heart beneath the vest.
Would they but discard their gear and ways!(5)

For the depravity of her age she foresees another and more frightful flood:

Father Noah, from whose good seed God graced
To populate the ancient world anew,
When the inundating deluge grew
Till they were drowned who had the world defaced.
If our age, no less impure, were faced
By the holy eye of him who knew,
With what holy ire would he then spew
A second flood, from blood of men disgraced.
Pray that in such fury I may be
Humble, pure in mind, and standing stark,
Nor swerving from the task imposed on me.
But dwelling inwardly inside the ark,
For the dear wounds of blood have set me free
And my live faith released me from the dark.(6)

Yet, for all her strictures on the times and the church, she did not impugn the spiritual authority of the popes nor refrain from using her influence to determine their decisions. She was responsible for the elevation of Bembo to the cardinalate.⁷ All this she might have done without any change in her religious stance, but a change did take place. The one responsible appears not to have been Valdés, whom she almost certainly knew in Naples,⁸ but Ochino, whom she heard preach in Rome. Giulia Gonzaga sent Valdés' commentary on Romans to Vittoria as a gift,⁹ but otherwise his name is not mentioned in her correspondence. She heard Ochino when he preached from two to six in the morning before a congregation including empurpled cardinals, and she, with the rest of the audience, was moved to tears.¹⁰

Two letters of indeterminate date from her pen are reminiscent of Ochino. Writing to another highborn dame of the Renaissance she announces:

“This morning my thoughts were directed to our Lady and in utter joy to embrace her Son. In the purest light I discerned a thousand knots binding them in the most ardent love. In her person creature and creator are united. Through her immaculate conception and true redemption, she is able on the wings of her great merit, to rise above the celestial choirs. The glorious Lady is above the angels, who served her on the way to Egypt; above the archangels, who govern but a single kingdom, whereas she is the queen of all; above the power to work miracles and cast out demons, for she has conquered hell; above the principalities, which are but inferior lights, while she is the true light which illumines all the blessed; above the dominions, above the thrones, above the cherubim, above the seraphim. She rises to the light which is one and three. In this clear and pure crystal one beholds the light invisible, supreme. The Father is pleased to have shown in her his power. The Son rejoices in her wisdom and the Spirit is consoled to see relucent in this most perfect bride his perfect goodness.”¹¹

The style reminds one of Ochino's rhapsody, already cited for its impact on Giulia Gonzaga. But Vittoria changes the emphasis. Ochino was concerned to show how one can rise from the knowledge of the creatures to the knowledge of God. Vittoria chose rather to exalt the queen of heaven above all the celestial hierarchy. One suspects also a touch of feminism, seeing that the next letter lauds another woman, Mary Magdalene, identified as was then common with the Mary who met the risen Lord in the garden. “Consider,” writes Vittoria, “how Christ made this beloved woman the first to witness the resurrection and commissioned her to bear the news to the disciples. Was it not this redeemed woman who followed him with burning love to the foot of the cross? When others fled she stood with the queen of heaven and the Holy Spirit. She became the perfect herald of the word divine, and on the mount of penitence was visited by the radiant star with the highest love.¹² One of the sonnets carries the same theme.

The damsel fair as she sat weighed by woe
Felt the great yearning which dispels all fear.
Alone by night, disdaining sword and spear
In ardent hope she essayed to go,
Entered the sepulchre by grief bent low,
Saw not angels, cast not for self a tear,
Fell where she thought the Saviour's feet were near,
Aflame with love no tremor could she know.
The men elected to enjoy such grace,
Strong, though they were, together crouched from fright.
The light became a naked sprite or shade.
If then the true is not to error made
Credit to the women goes by right.
They have the open heart and unaffrighted face.(13)

Vittoria Colonna, like Caterina Cibo, repelled by the society about her and aflame with a passion for the divine, took up the cause of the Capuchins after the influence of Caterina had waned at the papal court. No doubt the enthusiasm for the preaching of Ochino, their general, was the immediate incentive. On their behalf she wrote to Cardinal Contarini:

“The Capuchins are accused of being Lutherans. If St. Francis was a heretic, then call them Lutherans. If to preach the liberty of the Spirit is a vice, when subject to the rule of the church, what will you make of the text, ‘The Spirit gives life?’ If those who trouble these friars had seen their humility, poverty, obedience, and charity they would be ashamed. As for obedience, they wish to restore the rule of St. Francis. They are not rebellious against the clergy. The charge is made that they do not obey their own general, but he does not reform. The pope should support them. They want freedom simply to follow the rule of their founder, and I do not see why St. Francis should not receive as much favor at Rome as St. Benedict. Francis did not enforce his rule by prisons and death, but by humility, poverty and love. I do not see why human arguments should supersede the divine, that new laws should break the sacred constitution of the church. We should not follow our own judgment, but that of Christ and Paul. These Capuchins are not asking for greatness or riches. They ask in the name of the stigmata of St. Francis and the wounds of Christ to be left in peace to observe their rule. A cardinal inspired by God well said, ‘If your holiness does not approve of this rule, you will have to deny the gospel of Christ on which it is founded. There are orders which display on their banners the ensigns of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, and shall not these brothers be allowed to renew the habit of their glorious father?’”¹⁴

One observes in all that has been cited the warm piety of evangelical Catholicism with never a hint of any deviation from the standards of orthodoxy. But there are strains in her devotional poetry which could lead either to the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation. Neoplatonic influence is discernible in the frequent contrasts of light and darkness, brilliance and shadow, fire and frost, fervor and aridity, as well as in the desire to mount with wings to the true light and the true love.¹⁵ There is a depreciation of prudenza humana which does not mean exactly the prudential so much as reliance on the human intellect rather than upon spiritual illumination. This anti-intellectualism might lead to an uncritical acceptance of the dogmas of the church or to a complete indifference to any dogmas at all. All of this is in line with Franciscan piety, itself often anti-intellectual and centered upon the example of the wounds of Christ. Such themes may be further illustrated from her sonnets. The following one deals with the dangers of learning.

If the sun bestows his rays benign,
May we, not robed in virtue, nor in vice,
Through his sweet mercy, not our own device,
Lift up our heads to meet the grace divine.
Not sipping human lore, as it were wine,
And reading learned tomes, not once but twice,
For when the soul essays too great a rise
The more does it from faith and truth decline.
Shut then the eye to left, open to right,
On wings of faith and love essay to soar.
They lift the soul above the mortal view.
By true humility we reach the light
And know the sacred writings to be true.
Read little, then, and believe the more.(16)

The following sonnet voices the doctrine of justification by faith. But different levels of faith are distinguished. The faith “which light and joy endow” is not sufficient, but only that faith “kindled by heaven's fires.”

One cannot have a lively faith I trow
Of God's eternal promises if fear
Has left the warm heart chilled and seer
And placed a veil between the I and Thou.
Nor faith, which light and joy endow
And works, which in the course of love appear,
If oft some vile, deep dolor drear
Injects itself into the here and now.
These human virtues, works and these desires
All operate the same, are but a shade,
Cast as a shadow, moving or at rest,
But when the light descends from heaven's fires
Kindling hope and faith within the breast
Then doubt and fear and dolor, these all fade.(17)

At the same time good works receive some sort of recognition since Noah was saved because his good deeds were pleasing in God's sight:

You, Noah, were delivered in the ark, but why?
And you became the father of the race.
Why God should have conferred on you such grace
Is something you cannot explain, nor I.
You and yours alone were not to die,
For heaven looked with favor in your case.
You only by your deeds were no disgrace
But ground for love or envy by and by.
When all the world looked on you with despite
And gnashed their teeth from their imbedded hate,
Sweet love and peace relieved you in your plight.
And when the waters heaved their mighty weight
Since your good deeds were pleasing in God's sight
The waves of grace delivered you from fate.(18)

The Christ-centeredness of Vittoria Colonna's piety can be illustrated by her sonnets on the annunciation, the star at the nativity, and the cross.

“THE ANNUNCIATION”

Blessed angel with whom the Father swore
The ancient covenant now sealed anew,
Which gives us peace and shows the pathway true
To contemplate his gifts for evermore.
For this holy office held in store
With soul inclined and mind in constant view
By his high embassy he did imbue
The virgin's heart, which joyful I adore.
I beg you now behold the face and hands,
Humble response, tingéd with chaste dread,
The ardent love and faith with pulsing beat
Of her, who come from out no earthly lands,
With humble heartfelt yearning, sweet desire replete,
Greets, adores, embraces all God said.(19)

“THE STAR”

What joy, oh star and blessed sign
Twinkling on the cattle stall,
From the fabled east you call
Wise men to the birth divine!
Behold the King amid the kine
Swaddled in no lordly hall.
Above, what love surpassing all
Lifts our hearts and makes them thine!
The place, the beasts, the cold, the hay,
The lowly coverlet and bed
Of thy love what more could say?
Then, for the star which hither led
And gave such proof of thy design
To joyful praise our hearts incline.(20)

“THE CROSS”

When writhe the Saviour's shoulders on the tree
And droops the holy body from the weight,
Is there then no key to fit the gate
That heaven should not open for to see?
What grievous pangs he bore from sheer pity
And for our sakes endured so cruel a fate
Thus by his guiltless blood to recreate
Our spirits laved of all impurity!
Our surcease from war, within, wherever,
Comes from him, the author of our peace.
He is the sun whose brilliance blinds our eyes.
The Father's, secrets how he will release
To whom and where and when none can surmize.
Enough for us to know he cannot err.(21)

The friendship between Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo may have begun as early as 1538 and certainly endured until her death in 1547. His feeling of indebtedness to her in his advancing years is evident in these lines:

You had no need, my love, of any chain
To take me vanquished and make me your slave.
For I am sure—I very well recall—
One glance sufficed to make of me your slave.
Perhaps it was that I had known such pain
That in my weakness I should so behave.
Who would believe—though I do credence crave—
That your two lovely eyes so very soon
Should cause a withered tree to burgeon and to bloom?(22)

Whether her ideas of religious art directly affected his style is difficult to say. She arranged an interview between him and a Portuguese man named Ollanda, in the course of which Michelangelo set forth his theories of art. When he was asked what is needful in order to portray the Lord, he answered, “One needs almost to be a saint.”²³ With that judgment she would assuredly have concurred.

Michelangelo painted three pieces especially for Vittoria Colonna. One is a drawing of the Samaritan woman at the well. Perhaps he undertook it in order to illustrate her sonnet where she celebrates, as does the gospel, the universality of the Spirit.

“THE WOMAN AT THE WELL”

Oh blessed dame, to whom beside the fount
Where you had come to fill your jar he spake,
At whose word the sea and mountains quake,
No more of old nor on the sacred mount,
With hearty faith we now our wants recount,
With sweet tears or bitter supplicate
The Father, who will inward wishes take,
And silent prayers, as they were spoken, count.
But then was thy deep yearning met
When on thee fell that burning vibrant ray
Illumining Samaria and mankind.
In haste you ran thereat in each byway
That none this festive day should e'er forget
But honor him with heart and soul and mind.(24)

Michelangelo's depiction of the woman at the well offers nothing strikingly novel. She is pointing to the water in the well, while Jesus is evidently discoursing on the water of life. The next two drawings done for Vittoria are quite different. The pietà is markedly divergent from the pietà done in Michelangelo's youth, now in the Vatican. There the mother looks upon her son with the pensive melancholy of Neoplatonic composure. Here she is not looking at him at all, but in ecstasy her gaze is upward and her arms outstretched as the mediator and intercessor, a concept not alien to Michelangelo or Vittoria. The center of attention is held by her son. Beneath his feet we see the crown of thorns. Almost emerging from his body the cross ascends with the inscription, “One cannot grasp what blood it cost.” The very form of this cross makes it the more a symbol of redemption because it is the cross conserved at Santa Croce, which was carried in procession to stay the great plague of the Black Death in 1348. The supports of the arms of the cross form a triangle with the crossbeam. Since this is reproduced from an actual cross, one would not suspect symbolism until observing that the head of the mother and the hands of the son form another triangle suggestive of the Trinity. The composition is thus determined by considerations of theology.²⁵

The greatest innovation of all is evident in the depiction of the crucifixion. From the twelfth century on, under the impact of Bernardine and Franciscan piety, the emphasis was upon the intense suffering and utter lassitude of the dead Christ. His head was made to fall upon the right shoulder. The arms sagged. The legs were crossed and held by only one nail so that the body assumed the shape of an S, exhibiting the utter collapse after the agony of death. This crucifix of Michelangelo is alive. The head is upright. The eyes are open. The body is the bel corpo ignudo of the David. This is the Christ triumphant over death. Beneath the arms of Christ on each side are little angels, not for the purpose of holding a chalice to catch the blood but rather to point to the wound and give comfort to Christ.²⁶ In this treatment Michelangelo was returning to the style of early portrayals of the crucifixion in the fifth century. Whether he had actually seen the picture herewith reproduced is doubtful, but he was in line with a general tendency of the Catholic liberal reform to restore primitive Christianity.²⁷

Vittoria, in thanking him, said she had entertained the greatest faith that God would confer upon him the supernatural grace to execute this work, but now she found it marvelous beyond all expectation. She believed that the Archangel Michael would set Michelangelo at the right hand of the Lord at the last day.²⁸

The greatest crisis in the life of Vittoria Colonna, as for many others, came with the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in 1542. She was disturbed when some of her friends came under suspicion and even more when some were guilty of defection. The severest blow was the flight of Ochino. He sent her a letter explaining his reasons for scaling the Alps. She refused to open the letter and turned it over to Cardinal Pole, who forwarded it to the Inquisition at Rome. Ochino was for her outside the pale because no longer in the ark. “The more he excuses himself,” said she, “the more he accuses.”²⁹ How did she know if she did not open the letter?

Making life even more bitter for her was her brother's conflict with the pope. As a result of this conflict, the Colonnas were expelled from the papal patrimony and her brother exiled to Naples. Vittoria sorely needed a new spiritual counsellor. She found one in a man equally in need of her.

Cardinal Reginald Pole³⁰ was of the house of the Plantagenets, a relative of Henry VIII of England and a possible claimant to the throne. Henry sought to win him for his cause in the matter of his divorce, but Pole refused to be swayed and came out with a public declaration in condemnation of the king. Henry could not touch his person since he was abroad, but the royal ire fell upon his family. Two brothers were executed and, after a time, also his mother. Pole told Vittoria he had never believed he would be the son not only of a saint but also of a martyr.

In his grief he found a second mother in the Marchesa, ten years his senior. At the same time he became her spiritual director and dissuaded her from the rigorous asceticism with which she sought to assuage her disquiet. Carnesecchi testified that before the encounter with Pole Vittoria afflicted herself with fasts, hairshirts, and other mortifications and nearly reduced herself to skin and bones.³¹ That Vittoria should have had recourse to such a discipline shows plainly that she had not grasped the gospel of Valdés but was closer to the Ochino of the Capuchins before his disillusionment with outward macerations. Pole persuaded her to temper her austerities.

Had she lived longer, she would almost certainly have been suspected of heresy, as was Pole himself. Nearly ten years after her death he had to defend himself vigorously to Paul IV, saying that he did not complain of being deprived of his legation to England—this was under the restoration of Catholicism in England by Mary Tudor—but the insinuation of heresy he could not stand. He besought the pope to be like that Abraham whose hand was stayed from the slaying of his son.³² Pole was certainly no heretic. Neither was Vittoria. Both accepted the doctrine of justification by faith, but this was not heretical prior to Trent. When the subject was up for a pronouncement by Trent, Vittoria said that Pole was mercifully delivered from attendance by a severe case of catarrh,³³ but when against his dissent the doctrine was promulgated, he submitted. Vittoria would undoubtedly have done the same. Carnesecchi did report that she was pleased with Luther's commentary on Psalm 45.³⁴ It must have been in an anonymous and truncated translation, because the full version contains blasts against the Roman church which she could never have countenanced.³⁵

She died in 1547. Michelangelo confessed in the following lines that with her passing his creative power was paralyzed.

The sculptor's hammer according to his will
Gives to the rugged stone a human form.
The hammer of itself knows not the norm
And must be guided by the sculptor's skill.
The hammer forged remains a hammer still.
There is a power that rides above the storm,
Beauty alone creates, invests with form,
Able to recreate and also kill.
The hammer, if the hand be lifted high,
Descends with greater force upon the stone.
Mine upraised was snatched with her away.
Untouched about me now my carvings lie.
I know not what to do. I am alone,
Unless the great Artificer will show the way.(36)

Notes

1. Testimony of Ollanda in English translation as an appendix to Charles Holroyd, Michel Angelo Buonarroti (London, 1903), p. 271. There is no certainty that Ollanda reports an actual conversation.

2. Carteggio, XL, p. 61; XLI, p. 62.

3. Ibid., XXXIV, p. 38.

4. Carteggio, CXXIX, p. 218.

5. Rime II, CXXXIV, p. 294.

6. Ibid., II, XCVI, p. 256.

7. Carteggio, CIV, p. 174.

8. Bibliography on this point in Nicolini.

9. Carteggio, CXLII, p. 240.

10. Roland H. Bainton, Bernardino Ochino (Florence, 1940), p. 33.

11. Carteggio, CLXIX and CLXX, pp. 205 and 302. Jedin sees here the influence of Pole. I would say rather that of Ochino.

    Hubert Jedin, “Kardinal Pole und Vittoria Colonna,” Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte I (Herder, 1966), p. 189.

12. Carteggio, CLXX, pp. 300-301.

13. Rime, II, CLXII, p. 317.

14. Carteggio, LXXI, 111 f.

15. Rime, II, CVI, p. 266.

16. Ibid., II, XXXIV, p. 194.

17. Ibid., II, CXLV, p. 305, Cf. II, XXI, p. 191 solo per fede and CLVIII, p. 318; CXCI, p. 351.

18. Ibid., II, XCVII, p. 257.

19. Ibid., II, CIV, p. 264.

20. Ibid., II, CIX, p. 269.

21. Ibid., II, LXV, p. 225.

22. Italian text in William Wells Newhall, Sonnets & Madrigals of Michelangelo Buonarroti (London, 1900), No. XXIV, p. 54. Opening line: Mestier non era all'alma tuo beltate.

23. English translation in Holyrod, p. 319. See note 1 above.

24. Johann J. Wyss, Vittoria Colonna (Frauenfeld, 1916), p. 87.

25. See the discussion in Alexander Perrig, “Michelangelo Buonarrotis.” Letze Pietà-Idee,: Basler Studien zur Kunstgeschichte N. F., Bd. I, pp. 21-35. On the state of the drawing consult Rollin N. Hadley, Drawings. The Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1968). This drawing has manifestly been clipped because the last word of the inscription on the cross has been removed. The full inscription is from Dante's Paradiso XIX, line 91 No vi si pensa quanto sangue costa. The full form of the original can be seen only in the engraving made from it in 1546.

26. See the discussion in Charles de Tolnay, Werk und Weltbild des Michelangelo (Zürich, 1949), p. 70. The following work deals mainly with the influence of this crucifixion of Michelangelo on subsequent portrayals: Guido Cimino, Il Crucifisso di Michelangelo per Vittoria Colonna (Rome, 1967).

27. See the illustrations.

28. Carteggio, CXXIV, p. 209. Cf. CXXIII, p. 208.

29. Ibid., CXLIX, p. 257.

30. W. Shenck, Reginald Pole (London, 1950).

31. Carnesecchi, p. 499.

32. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes, XIV, pp. 308-11.

33. Carteggio, p. 342.

34. Ibid.

35. Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe 40, II, 472-610.

36. Italian text in William Wells Newall. See above note 22. No. LXI, p. 150. The first line reads: Se'l mio rozzo martello i' duri sassi.

Bibliography

Biographies

Alfred von Reumont

Vittoria Colonna (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881). The standard treatment. Benedetto Nicolini

“Sulla Religiosità di Vittoria Colonna,” Ideali e Passioni nell'Italia Religiosa del Cinquecento (Bologna, 1962), an interpretation with up-to-date bibliography.

Eva Maria Jung

“Vittoria Colonna: between Reformation and Counter-Reformation,” Review of Religion XV (1951), 144-59.

Sources

Vittoria Colonna … Carteggio, ed. E. Ferrero and G. Müller (Turin, 1892). Abbreviation, Carteggio.

Le Rime di Vittoria Colonna, ed. Pietro Ercole Visconti (Rome, 1840). Abbreviation, Rime.

“Estratto del Processo di Pietro Carnesecchi,” ed. Giacomo Manzoni, Miscellanea di Storia Italiana X (Turin, 1870), 187-573. Abbreviation, Carnesecchi.