Vittoria Colonna

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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 200 years. In the 19th century she was rediscovered as Michelangelo's muse and has been in his shadow ever since. Who was she? No less than the female genius of Italian Renaissance. Her Humanist education, a novelty for aristocrats of her age, spurred her on to maximize her intellectuality. Daringly, she questioned the abstraction of male systems of thought from the perspective of a woman, who was concerned with fullness of life. Her male contemporaries were amazed at this new woman and her „male brains“. Vittoria proved congeniality with the pundits of her age, who exchanged letters with her. Only as a widow she became the First Lady of Italy excelling in intellectuality. As an adherent of reformed theology, she expressed the new spirituality by sonnets instead of prayers, but insisted on religious self-definition. Equally influenced by rationalist Renaissance-Humanism, she questioned Christian myths. From human-ethical principles she defied a godfather, who imposed on his innocent son the shameful death on the cross. Averse to gloomy „theologia crucis“ she united Jesus with Apollo, the bright Greek God, in her personal image of God. Intense was her friendship with Michelangelo, who visualised her heresies in his gift drawings for her, the only woman in his life loved by him „grandemente“. She proved a female genius by capitalising on Humanism to instigate a renaissance of women. Vittoria demanded human dignity for women and encouraged female self-definition. She broke taboos imposed on them by their patriarchs. By an audacious gender-crossing the poetess arrogated the male privilege of love poetry, expressing her longing for love frustrates by a husband, constantly absent in war and amours. In her restless female renaissance Vittoria did not shape a contoured profile. Who pigeonholes her robs this female genius of her individualism that can only be revealed by presenting her live in her presence. Vittoria Colonna's lively complexity outshines all literary female types, Shakespeare's women included.