SOURCE: Jung, Eva-Maria. “Vittoria Colonna: Between Reformation and Counter-Reformation.” The Review of Religion 15, Numbers 3-4 (March, 1851): 144-59.

In the following essay, Jung argues that Colonna's importance lies in her religious personality and moral perfection, rather than by her skill as a writer or her connections to important figures in art and literature.

Vittoria Colonna was called “divine” already during her own lifetime. Michelangelo said of her that she was “a man—nay, a god in a woman.”¹ This idealization of her was handed down uncritically by succeeding centuries, like an old ikon bequeathed by one generation to another, and hung in a corner of the house for pious veneration where nobody ever dusts it for fear that it will fall. But if it were dusted—what would be discovered? The features of a noble and pious princess, doubtless, but not those of the saint or genius which the...