Vittoria Colonna was called the most beautiful and gifted woman of her time in all Italy. Her life of nearly sixty years (1490-1547) lay entirely in that period when the apathy of ten centuries was broken, when the darkness fled before the dawning of a glorious day. New methods of thought, revised taste in poetry, new discoveries of science, a nobler progress in criticism, great discoveries, and a lofty and unprecedented freedom of conviction marked the century between 1450 and 1550, stamping it as the marvellous time which we know as the Renaissance, “that solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities, with their profound æsthetic charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type.”
It was peculiarly fitting that Italy should take the initiative in inaugurating this vita nuova. Italy had a language and literature and art. Dante had delivered his solemn message and Petrarca his impassioned song. Boccaccio had taught the gospel of gladness. Who shall analyze the secret springs of their inspiration and reveal to what degree Ovid and Horace and Virgil influenced the later literature? A new solar system was established by Copernicus. America was discovered. Science entered on her definite and ceaseless progress, and religion and art became significant forces in human life. Printing had been invented and the compass discovered.
Into this time of new forces, when everything was throbbing and pulsating with life, was Vittoria Colonna born into social prestige and splendor. Her father, Fabrizio Colonna, and her mother, Agnesina di Montefeltro, a daughter of the Duke of Urbino, were then domiciled in the castle of Marino, on the Lago d’Albano, a magnificent palace some twelve miles from Rome, in which the Duke d’Amalfi (the father of Fabrizio Colonna) lived, and which is still standing, filled with memorials and relics of historic interest. Urbino, the seat of the Montefeltro, is renowned as having been the birthplace of Raphael, who
“Only drank the precious wine of youth,”
but who
“. . . lives immortal in the hearts of men,
. . . and the world is fairer
That he lived in it.”
The Colonna date back to the eleventh century, and they gave many princes and cardinals to the country. At the close of the thirteenth century they were arrayed against Boniface VIII, the Pope, who accused them of crime, while they disputed the validity of his election to the holy office. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated the entire family, anathematized them as heretics and declared their estates forfeited to the church. The Colonna, far from being intimidated, commanded three hundred armed horsemen, attacked the papal palace, which they plundered, and made him a prisoner,—an incident referred to by Dante in the “Inferno.” The Colonna and the Orsini were also at warfare, and when a member of the former family was elevated to the papacy under the name of Martin V, they despoiled property of the Orsini.
Gay excursionists to-day, who fly over the Campagna in their twentieth-century touring cars to the lovely towns of the Alban hills, may look down from Castel Gandolfo on the gloomy, mediæval little town of Marino, part way up a steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her early childhood. “Nothing,” in his “Roba di Roma,” says Story, “can be more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna of Rome, . . . sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies cover vast meadows and vines shroud the picturesque ruins of antique villas, aqueducts, and tombs, or drop from mediæval towers and fortresses.”
Flying in the swift motor-car of the time toward the Alban hills, Marino may be easily reached in less than an hour from the Porta San Giovanni, and in the near distance Monte Albani, rising into the cone of Monte Cavi, is a picture before the eye, while on the lower slopes gleam the white villages of Albani, Marino, Castel Gandolfo, and Frascati, with the campanile of a cathedral, a fortress-like ruin, or gardens and olive orchards clambering up the heights. The Papal town of Rocca di Papa crowns one summit where once Tarquin’s temple to Jupiter stood and on whose ruins now gleam afar in the Italian sunshine the white walls of the Passionist convent of Monte Cavi, built by Cardinal York. From this height Juno gazed upon the great conflict of contending armies, if Virgil’s topography be entitled to authority. And here, through a defile in the hills, one may look toward Naples, “and then rising abruptly with sheer limestone cliffs and crevasses, where transparent purple shadows sleep all day long, towers the grand range of the Sabine mountains, whose lofty peaks surround the Campagna to the east and north like a curved amphitheatre. . . . Again, skirting the Pontine Marshes on the east, are the Volscian mountains, closing up the Campagna at Terracina, where they overhang the road and affront the sea with their great barrier. Following along the Sabine hills, you will see at intervals the towns of Palestrina and Tivoli, where the Anio tumbles in foam, and other little mountain towns nestled here and there among the soft airy hollows, or perched on the cliffs.”
In this landscape there are three ruined villages—Colonna, Gallicano, and Zagarda—perched on their respective hills. The castle of the Colonna family is now restored and modernized to a degree that leaves little trace of that former stately grandeur which is transmuted into modern convenience and comfort.