Vittoria Colonna Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series editors: James Daybell (Chair), Victoria E. Burke, Svante Norrhem, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks This series provides a forum for studies that investigate women, gender, and/ or sexuality in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for book-length studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including, but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on any part of the world, as well as comparative and global works. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; constructions of femininity and masculinity; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives; gender and architectural spaces (courts, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions. Vittoria Colonna Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact Edited by Virginia Cox and Shannon McHugh Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Jacopo da Pontormo (designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti), Noli me tan- gere, oil on panel, 124 × 95 cm, 1531–32. Private collection, Busto Arsizio, Varese, Lombardy. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 394 7 e-isbn 978 90 4855 260 3 doi 10.5117/9789463723947 nur 685 © V. Cox, S. McHugh / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. In memory of Giovanna Rabitti (1956–2008) Table of Contents List of Illustrations 11 Acknowledgements 15 Introduction: The Twenty-First Century Vittoria Colonna 17 Virginia Cox Part 1 Literary and Spiritual Sociability 1. The D’Avalos-Colonna Literary Circle: A ‘Renewed Parnassus’ 37 Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi 2. Late Love: Vittoria Colonna and Reginald Pole 55 Ramie Targoff Part 2 Widowhood 3. Magistra apostolorum: The Virgin Mary in Birgitta of Sweden and Vittoria Colonna 75 Unn Falkeid 4. Outdoing Colonna: Widowhood Poetry in the Late Cinquecento 95 Anna Wainwright Part 3 Poetry 5. The Epistolary Vittoria 117 Maria Serena Sapegno 6. ‘Ex illo mea, mi Daniel, Victoria pendet’ : A Forgotten Spiritual Epigram by Vittoria Colonna 135 Veronica Copello 7. Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna : Insights into Early Modern Piety and Poetics 153 Sarah Rolfe Prodan Part 4 Art 8. ‘Inscribed Upon Their Hearts’: Copying and the Dissemination of Devotion 173 Jessica Maratsos 9. Titian, Colonna, and the Gender of Pictorial Devotion 199 Christopher J. Nygren 10. ‘A More Loving and Constant Heart’ : Vittoria Colonna, Alfonso d’Avalos, Michelangelo and the Complicated History of Pontormo’s Noli me tangere 229 Dennis Geronimus Part 5 Readership 11. ‘Leading Others on the Road to Salvation’ : Vittoria Colonna and Her Readers 273 Abigail Brundin 12. ‘In Competition with and Perhaps More Felicitously Than Petrarch’ : The Canonization of Vittoria Colonna in Rinaldo Corso’s Tutte le rime (1558) 291 Humberto González Chávez Part 6 Impact 13. Colonna and Petrarch in the Rime of Lucia Colao 309 Andrea Torre 14. ‘I Take Thee’: Vittoria Colonna, Conjugal Verse and Male poeti colonnesi 331 Shannon McHugh 15. ‘She Showed the World a Beacon of Female Worth’ : Vittoria Colonna in Arcadia 351 Tatiana Crivelli Volume Bibliography 371 Index of Citations of Colonna’s Letters and Verse 399 Thematic Index 401