Far other mountain-tops, I now frequent,
Where human steps, unaided, cannot mount.”
All writers on Italian poetry are agreed that for delicacy and grace of style Vittoria ranks next to Petrarch.
Several medals and portraits have perpetuated her features at different periods of life. Of the former, two were made while her husband was living—both heads being represented—and two during her widowhood. A most beautiful medal was struck at Rome in 1840 on occasion of the marriage of Prince Torlonia to Donna Teresa Colonna, but the face is more or less ideal.
Several portraits were painted during her lifetime, but it is difficult to trace them all. Some are lost, and others are doubtful originals. The thoroughly genuine one (say the Romans) is that in the Colonna Gallery. It is a fine type of chaste and patrician beauty. It was taken when she was about eighteen; although how it can in this case (and it certainly represents her still in her teens) be ascribed to Muziano, as it is by Mrs. Roscoe, we cannot understand, because this artist was born only in 1528, when Vittoria was already thirty-eight years old. The fact is that the artist is unknown; but there should be some acuteness even in conjecture. Although it would be highly flattering to the vanity of her race, and of the Romans in general, to believe that her portrait was sketched by Michael Angelo and painted by Sebastiano del Piombo, they reject with horror the celebrated picture by their hands in the Tribune at Florence in which others see her face and figure. The best judges, however, call it simply “A Lady, 1512”; and our ideal of Vittoria revolts from the voluptuous features and disgusting pectoral development of this portrait; but if it were possible to determine it in her favor (?) we should have to exclaim:
“Appena si può dir, questà furosa.”
All writers on Italian literature mention our heroine at considerable length; but of separate biographies the principal ones are the following: Gio. Batt. Rota, Rime e Vita di D. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana di Pescara, 1 vol. 8vo, 1760; Isabella Teotochi Albizzi, Ritratti, etc., Pisa, 1826 (4th ed., copy in Astor Library); John S. Harford, Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti …
with Memoirs of … Vittoria Colonna, 2 vols., London, 1857 (Astor Library); Cav. P. E. Visconti, Vita di Vittoria Colonna, Rome, 1840; Le Fèvre Deumier published a memoir of her in French in 1856; T. A. Trollope, A Decade of Italian Women; Mrs. Henry Roscoe, Vittoria Colonna, 1 vol., London, 1868. In 1844 the Accademia degli Arcadi at Rome decreed to have a bust of Vittoria made and placed in the museum of the Capitol. It was inaugurated with great pomp on May 12, 1845; and thirty-two poems in Latin and Italian were written to celebrate the event, and afterwards collected into a volume and published. The following is the simple inscription beneath the bust:
A. Vittoria Colonna.
N.MCCCCXC. M.MDXLVII.
Teresa. Colonna. Principessa. Romana.
Pose.
MDCCCXLV.
[185] Published only in 1785.