SOURCE: Gibaldi, Joseph. “Vittoria Colonna: Child, Woman, and Poet.” In Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, pp. 22-46. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Gibaldi presents an overview of Colonna's life and career, discussing her relationship with other famous figures or her time, the reaction to her poetry by her contemporaries, and the general subjects, themes, and imagery found in her poetry.

Ludovico Ariosto devotes one of his most famous digressions in Orlando Furioso to the many excellent women writers of his age—those who abandoned the needle and cloth and joined the Muses on Mount Helicon to quench their thirst at the sacred fountain (37.14). So numerous are these women, writes Ariosto, that to render a proper account of each would fill up an entire canto. He wonders if he should select only five or six to...