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...