VITTORIA COLONNA

Little of her mesmerising individualism has been passed on. As a heretical woman extinguished by the Inquisition, Vittoria Colonna disappeared from the collective consciousness of Europe for two centuries. In the nineteenth century she was rediscovered as Michelangelo's muse and has been in his shadow ever since without being granted an identity of her own. Who was she? No less than the female genius of Italian Renaissance. Her humanist education, a novelty for women of her age, spurred her on to maximise her intellectuality. Daringly, she questioned the abstraction of male systems of thought from her perspective of a woman concerned with life in its fullness, Her male contemporaries were amazed at this new woman and her „male brains“. Vittoria even proved congeniality with the intellectual pundits of her age, who exchanged letters with her. As a widow she rose to the status of the First Lady of Italy excelling in intellectuality. As an adherent of Reformed Theology she expressed the new spirituality in her sonnets instead of prayers, but also insisted on religious self-definition. She broke taboos imposed on women by their patriarchs. By audacious gender-crossing the poetess arrogated the male privilege of writing love-poetry. She did espress her female longing for marital love frustrated by a husband constantly absent in wars and amours. In her restless female resurgence she did not shape a conventional profile. Who pigeonholes her robs this female genius of her authenticity that can only be brought to light by presenting her live in her presence. Vittoria's lively complexity outshines all female types Renaissance literature, Shakespeare's women included.