Michael John Partington reviews an exhibition about the half-forgotten Renaissance poet Vittoria Colonna at Casa Buonarroti in Florence
That which the human mind can comprehend
of eternal truths we can teach ourselves,
through long study, guided by rare insight,
I believe your soul has comprehended…¹
So begins the sonnet ‘Quanto intender qui puote umano ingegno’, written to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) by Vittoria Colonna (1492 – 1547), poet, religious thinker, Marchioness of Pescara and grand-daughter of the famed condottiere (mercenary soldier) and patron of the arts, the Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro (1420 – 1482).
The poem (c. 1539 – 40) exemplifies the strong spiritual and intellectual friendship which developed in the 1530s and 1540s between the artist Michelangelo and the poet Vittoria Colonna, a period when Michelangelo was working on the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and a time when both Michelangelo and Vittoria were in deep religious crisis, as indeed was the entire Catholic Church, facing up as it was to the theological and political challenge of the Protestant movement.
This is Vittoria Colonna’s year: an exhibition and a number of books partly or wholly devoted to this hitherto much neglected Renaissance poet. For one, there is Gaia Servadio’s Renaissance Woman (I.B. Tauris), which takes the invention of the printing press in 1456 as marking the birth of the Renaissance and examines the lives of several leading Renaissance women after this date, including Lucrezia Borgia and Vittoria Colonna, and their intellectual and personal relationships with prominent Renaissance men such as the cardinal-poet Pietro Bembo (1470 – 1547) and the church reformer Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500 – 1558). For another, there is Sonnets for Michelangelo (University of Chicago Press), translated and edited by Abigail Brundin, which, for the first time, publishes the collection of poems Vittoria wrote and presented to Michelangelo in manuscript form during his lifetime.
The exhibition, ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo’, which opened at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence back in March, and continues until the 12th of September, is a small but exceptionally enlightening affair, whose primary objective is to bring to wider prominence this key figure of the late Renaissance literary world.
Curated by Pina Ragionieri, Director of the Fondazione Casa Buonarotti, the idea for the show was born over a decade ago in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna It was part of a wider project which had the goal of bringing to the fore three of the most important women of the Italian Renaissance: the patron and collector Isabella d’Este (1474 – 1539), the Cremonese painter Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532 – 1625) and, of course, Vittoria.
The original exhibition concerning Vittoria was inaugurated at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1997, which centred exclusively on the aforementioned profound friendship between Michelangelo and Vittoria. Unfortunately, due to a severe lack of financial resources, the Florence dates were cancelled, much to the chagrin of all involved in planning the project and causing something of a furore in the national press in Italy.
The intervening years, however, proved a blessing a disguise, as much new scholarly research on Vittoria as a thinker and poet in her own right was carried out, which has resulted in a far richer bibliography on her life and work and, therefore, has allowed the exhibition organisers in Florence to place her firmly at the centre of the discourse rather than simply as an adjunct to Michelangelo.
This shift in emphasis is easily noted by comparing the titles of the two exhibitions held in Vienna and Florence respectively: from ‘Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos’ to Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’. Thus Vittoria goes from anonymous supporting role as ‘Michelangelo’s Muse’ to top billing.
The lay-out of the show, too, does far more justice to the true historical figure of Vittoria, divided up as it is into four sections (and, conveniently, four rooms), each highlighting a different facet of her life and work with a richly varied display of paintings, drawings, medals, coins, books, letters and poems.
Room I, ‘Vittoria Colonna, il Castello di Ischia e la cultura delle corti’, explores the early influences on Vittoria’s life, from the cosmopolitan climate of the court of Naples to, especially, that of the Castello di Ischia, situated on the island in the gulf of Naples, which became a refuge for scholars and humanists after the Sack of Rome in 1527. The highlight of this section is the two Sebastiano del Piombo portraits of Vittoria dating from the 1520s. The first version is in a relatively poor condition due to damage; however, the second, (Earl of Harewood, Leeds), in a clear attempt to emphasise her piety and status as a widow, depicts Vittoria in simple Roman dress with a face of extraordinary beauty and liquid brown eyes, as Artemesia about to drink the ashes of her husband Mausolos (hence ‘Mausoleum’) from a cup which she holds in her right hand.
Room II, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano e Michelangelo)’, looks at her devotion to the figure of Mary Magdalen – a devotion shared by Isabella d’Este – and her commissioning of two paintings of Mary Magdalen by Titian and Michelangelo. The first, though completed with characteristic speed by Titian in about a month in 1531, was lost; while Michelangelo’s Noli me Tangere (‘touch me not’) is only known to us through two studies for the figure of Christ and a finished panel painting by Jacopo Pontormo (attributed), all of which are on display in this room.
Room III,. ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, deals with Vittoria’s active participation in the debates on the reform of the Church and its doctrine (especially justification by faith) which took place during the 1530s and brought her into close, and dangerous, alliance with leading reformers such as the English Cardinal Reginald Pole, who is represented in the exhibition by Perino del Vaga’s haunting portrait.
Finally, Room IV, ‘Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo’, focuses on the final decade or so of Vittoria’s life and the intense and mutually supportive friendship with Michelangelo. As recorded in Francesco de Hollanda’s i Dialoghi romani, they would meet frequently at the Church of San Silvestro at the Quirinale at Rome and, sitting in the small garden next to the church, would discuss, more often than not at Vittoria’s prompting, such complex issues as the connection between ‘poesia e pittura’ (poetry and painting) and the problem of representing God in art. These meditations were expressed in the many letters and poems they exchanged in this period, a selection of which are on show. There are also some preparatory sketches by Michelangelo for, and derivations by other artists of, the three drawings of the Crucifixion, the Pietà and Cristo e la Samaritana, which Michelangelo produced as a personal gift for Vittoria which, like the correspondence and sonnets, were a further product of their pious discourses. Sadly, of these three finished drawings, only the Pietà still exists (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), which is included in the show.
The exhibition, then, is a marked success for the figure of Vittoria Colonna: someone who can no longer be regarded as a peripheral figure of the Renaissance. She was a poet of considerable and sophisticated talent, highly regarded by her contemporaries, both male and female, who took centre stage in the volatile religious debates of the sixteenth-century and who inspired and was in turn inspired by one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Vittoria unquestionably takes the palm in 2005.
1. For the full sonnet see www.jimandellen.org/vcsonnets/vcsonnet279.html
Exhibition details: ‘Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo’, Casa Buonarroti, Via Ghibellina, 70, Florence, 14 March – 12 September 2005
Open: Monday – Wednesday 9.30 – 16.00 and Friday – Sunday 9.30 – 16.00
Closed: Thursday
Full price: € 6.50
Reductions: € 4.00
*The ticket includes entry into both the temporary exhibition and the permanent displays dedicated to Michelangelo at Casa Buonarroti.
Getting there: Casa Buonarroti is situated in the very heart of Florence, a short walk from the Palazzo del Bargello, home to the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which is on the corner of Via Ghibellina and Via del Proconsolo.
For further details, including images from the exhibition see www.casabuonarroti.it
