The Naples Riviera

by Herbert M. Vaughan

Ch’ ogni altro lume fan scuro e negletto.”

Strange to relate, her husband, the Marquis of Pescara, was destined to forestall his learned lady in the matter of poetry, for during his imprisonment at Milan in the year 1512, he composed a “Dialogo d’Amore” to send to his sorrowing wife at Ischia, a production which the learned Paolo Giovio, the historian and bishop of Nocera, pronounced as being “summae jucunditatis,” though in reality it seems to have been feeble enough. But however halting and commonplace the warrior’s verses, Pescara’s composition had the immediate effect of opening the flood-gates of his wife’s poetic temperament, for she replied at once to her spouse’s effort with an epistle conceived in the terza rima employed by Dante, and though the poem is turgid in diction and shallow in thought, full of classical names and allusions, “a parade of all the treasures of the school-room,” it exhibits the graceful ease and high scholarship which mark all Vittoria’s writings. Meanwhile, unblest with offspring of her own and ever separated by the cruel circumstance of war from the husband she seemed perfectly content to admire from a distance, Vittoria did not expend all her time at Ischia in sacrificing to Apollo and the Muses, for she now undertook the education of her husband’s young cousin and heir, Alphonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, whose manhood certainly did credit to his instructress, for del Vasto under her influence grew up to be a brave soldier and a tolerable scholar.

After sixteen years of married life with a husband who, although professing deep devotion to his brilliant and virtuous consort, was almost invariably absent from her side, Vittoria found herself left a widow shortly [pg 279]after the great battle of Pavia in 1525 wherein Francis I. of France surrendered to the Emperor Charles V. The Marquis of Pescara, after the usual career of bloodthirsty adventures which passed in those days for a life of knight-errantry, died at Milan towards the close of this year, leaving behind him an unenviable reputation for treachery towards his master. But however hard were the things said of the deceased Fernando d’Avalos by the outside world, no breath of suspicion seems ever to have penetrated to the heart of the faithful if placid Vittoria, who mourned bitterly if somewhat theatrically over her departed hero. The Lady of the Rock was now in her thirty-fifth year, and her beauty, so we are told, still remained undimmed; in fact it was rather improved by a tendency towards plumpness, for sorrow and poetry are not necessarily associated with a meagre appearance. Spending her time partly in the great Italian cities, but chiefly on her beloved scoglio superbo, the widow of Pescara now set herself to write that series of sonnets in memory of her dead husband which have rescued his unworthy name from oblivion and have rendered her own famous in Italian literature. For the sonnets of Vittoria Colonna, though appearing cold classical and pedantic to our northern ideas, evidently appeal to the Italian temperament, so that the praises of Pescara and his widow’s stilted complaints, couched in the elegant language of the Renaissance, are still read and appreciated to-day by her compatriots. As time passed, and the ghost of sorrowful remorse was supposed to be decently laid, the sonnets contain somewhat less of hero-worship, and assume a religious and speculative character. Some critics have even gone so far as to [pg 280]affect to perceive a latent spirit of Protestantism underlying the graceful platitudes and commonplace but grandly expressed ideas. Very likely the Lady of the Rock dabbled in the fashionable heterodoxy of the hour, as it is at least certain that she was on terms of intimacy with the celebrated Princess Renée, the “Protestant” Duchess of Ferrara. On the other hand, several of her acquaintances and correspondents were amongst the most prominent of the unyielding Churchmen of the day; in their number being, it is interesting to note, Cardinal Reginald Pole, great-nephew of King Edward IV. of England and afterwards Queen Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury, who was certainly not likely to encourage Vittoria’s unorthodox or reforming tendencies. “The more opportunity,” so writes the poetess to Cardinal Cervino, afterwards Pope Marcellus II., “I have had of observing the actions of his Eminence the Cardinal of England, the more clear has it seemed to me that he is a true and sincere servant of God. Whenever, therefore, he charitably condescends to give me his opinion on any point, I conceive myself safe from error in following his advice.” And on the strength of Cardinal Pole’s astute counsels, Vittoria promptly broke off all communication with the leading reformer, Bernardino Ochino, and (a thing which does not strike us as particularly honourable) forwarded his letters to herself unopened to his spiritual adversaries. But it is evident that Vittoria’s “Protestantism” was a mere pose, assumed at a time when adverse criticism from all sides was being levelled at the political abuses of the Papacy and at the various scandals in the Church which were patent to the eyes of all onlookers. In [pg 281]short her religious verses are if anything more frigid and artificial than those which compose the In Memoriam to her husband, her Bel Sole, as she usually terms him. Whilst admitting considerable merit in Vittoria’s compositions, we find it at this distance of time very difficult to understand the extravagant praise which was showered upon her poems by the Italian critics of the day, or to conceive how a sonnet from the gifted pen of the Marchioness of Pescara could possibly have been considered an important event in the literary world by cardinals, princes, poets, wits and scholars. From Naples to Rome, from Rome to Ferrara, from Ferrara to Mantua and Milan, the precious manuscript containing the last-born sonnet of the illustrious Lady of Ischia was eagerly passed along. Court poets read aloud amidst breathless silence the divine Vittoria’s fourteen lines of jejune sentiment draped in folds of elegant verbiage; nobles and prelates applauded, hailing the authoress as a heaven-sent genius. Sincere to a certain extent this strange admiration undoubtedly was, although the homage was paid perhaps in equal proportions to the excellence of the verse and to the high rank of the author. She was a Colonna by birth; she was the widow of a petty despot; she was governor of a large island;—any literary production, however indifferent, from so high a personage would have been received throughout Italy with respect or flattery. But Vittoria was no mean or careless aspirant to fame; it was the fault of an artificial age rather than the lack of her own natural ability that has made her poetry cold and soulless, for under healthy conditions of life and thought, “the Divine Vittoria” was doubtless capable of pro[pg 282]ducing something warmer and more human than the lifeless but graceful sonnets that bear her name.

It is chiefly through her close connexion with the great literary movement of the Italian Renaissance and her intimacy with its leading artists and writers, rather than through her own reputation as a poetess, that the name of Vittoria Colonna herself is remembered outside the borders of Italy. With her wealth, her culture, her virtue and her unique position in the world of rank and of letters, it is nothing marvellous that so fortunate and gifted a mortal should have become the idol of the leading persons of her day. She belonged, in fact, to a brilliant and famous group of which she was the soul and centre; of which she was at once the patron, the disciple and the teacher. That great master of Italian prose, Pietro Bembo, set a high value on her powers of criticism; other men, almost as distinguished as the Venetian cardinal, besought her for advice on literary subjects. Foremost in her circle of admirers appears of course the great Michelangelo, with whom the immaculate Vittoria condescended to indulge in one of those cold platonic pseudo-passions which constituted the true divino amore of the idealists of the Renaissance. So here was nothing to cavil at, nothing to arouse base suspicion. Considered the greatest man and the greatest woman in all Italy, both were of mature age, he in the sixties and she in the forties, when Michelangelo first professed himself seized with a pure but unquenchable love and devotion for the widowed Lady of the Rock.

The last days of Vittoria, which were chiefly spent within the walls of the Convent of Sant’ Anna at [pg 283]Rome, were clouded by ill-health and sorrow. The death of the young Marchese del Vasto, “her moral and intellectual son,” was an irreparable loss, for which her boundless fame and popularity could offer little real consolation. At length the poetess, feeling death approaching, moved to the house of Giulia Colonna, her relative, and there expired in February 1547, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. To the last her death-bed was surrounded by sorrowing and adoring friends, amongst them being Michelangelo, who is said to have witnessed with his own eyes the last moments of his beloved Lady. And the famous sculptor, painter and poet—perhaps the most stupendous genius the world has yet produced—is reported to have bitterly regretted in after years that on so solemn an occasion he had not ventured to imprint one chaste kiss upon the forehead of the woman he had adored so ardently, yet so purely during life. By her expressed wish the body of the poetess was buried in San Domenico Maggiore at Naples, the finest and least spoiled of all the Neapolitan churches, where a velvet-covered coffin containing the ashes of the Divine Vittoria and her “Bel Sole,” and surmounted by the sword, banner and portrait of Fernando d’Avalos, is still pointed out to the stranger, resting on a shelf in the sacristy of the church. We cannot but regret that Vittoria’s body did not find a final resting-place in her superbo scoglio, where all her happiest years were spent and where her memory still survives so fresh.

Sadly deserted appear to-day the historic buildings, which are fast falling into hopeless decay; even the large domed church of the Castle has been desecrated and turned into a stable.

“Tocsins from yon bleak turrets never ring;

No knight or pages pace those galleries,

So sombre and so silent: ever cling

To that cold church and palace draperies