MICHAEL ANGELO.
The Duca and Duchessa of Ferrara invited the most distinguished persons in Venice and Bologna and Lombardy to meet their honored guest. Bishop Ghiberto of Verona besought her to visit that city. Vittoria accepted and was for some time the Bishop’s guest in his palace, and she took great interest in the historic city. With the Bishop she visited the ancient Duomo, which in 1160 had been restored by Pope Urban II, and reconsecrated. It was a strong desire of the Marchesa at this time to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but the journey was then so perilous and so long—none too easy, indeed, at the present time—that she was dissuaded from the attempt.
Verona, to do her honor, had a medal struck bearing her portrait. The group of great artists—Titian, Tintoretto, and Giorgione in Venice; Fra Angelico, Bartolommeo, and others of that day—were creating their wonderful works which Vittoria must have seen and enjoyed during this tour. Raphael, whose death had occurred in 1520, Vittoria had, doubtless, known; but whether it was she who was the original of the Muse in his great picture of “Parnassus,” as is alleged, is not fully established.
DETAIL FROM “PARNASSUS,”
RAPHAEL STANZE, PALAZZO VATICANO, ROME
Raphael Sanzio
“Unto my buried lord I give myself,”
wrote Vittoria Colonna in one of the sonnets to her husband’s memory, and this line is the keynote to her entire life, both as woman and poet. It was no translation of her life into another key, no reckoning by stars that flashed from different skies, when there fell upon her the baptism and crown of that immortal friendship with Michael Angelo.
The Marchesa di Pescara returned to Rome, from this notable tour in Northern Italy, in 1538. She was received with the honors that her fame inspired. Michael Angelo was then deeply absorbed in painting his “Last Judgment,” in the Capella Sistina.