Companion to Vittoria Colonna

Abigail Brundin is a Reader in Early Modern Literature and Culture in the Department of Italian at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College. She has published on women writers in the first age of print, on literature and religious reform, including censorship and the first Indexes of Prohibited Books, and on poetry in and around convents. Her books include Vittoria Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo (Chicago: 2005) and Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Aldershot: 2008).Tatiana Crivelli is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Zurich, where from 2004 to 2014 she also directed the Centre for Renaissance Studies. She has published books on Giacomo Leopardi and on the novel in 18th-century Italy, but among her research interests women’s writing has a particular relevance. Her most recent books are La donzelletta che nulla temea. Percorsi alternativi nella letteratura italiana tra Sette e Ottocento (Rome: 2014) and Pellegra Bongiovanni, Risposte a nome di Madonna Laura alle Rime di Messer Francesco Petrarca in vita della medesima (Rome-Padua: 2014).Maria Serena Sapegno teaches medieval Italian Literature (Boccaccio and Petrarca), renaissance culture (political thought, historiography, utopian treatises, women poets), and 19th-century literature at “La Sapienza” University of Rome, where she also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies. Her most recent publications are Il senso e le forme. Storia e Antologia della letteratura Italiana (Florence: 2011) and L’Italia dei poeti (Rome: 2013).

“This volume gathers together much essential information that a scholar would wish to have at hand, including Colonna’s biography, thorough accounts of early editions of her poetry, a catalogue of known portraits, and the record of Michelangelo’s presentation drawings. But this is no mere handbook. The volume holds much that will be novel and engaging for even the most dedicated Colonna scholar.” Shannon McHugh, University of Massachusetts. In: Early Modern Women, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2020), pp. 179–182.

• Notes on Editors and ContributorsList of FiguresTimeline: Vittoria Colonna in ContextNote on the TextBibliographical AbbreviationsPart I: Vittoria Colonna: Life and LettersIntroductionAbigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, and Maria Serena SapegnoChapter 1: Vittoria Colonna’s Epistolary Works Adriana ChemelloPart II: The PoetryChapter 2: Vittoria Colonna in ManuscriptAbigail BrundinChapter 3: The Print Tradition of Vittoria Colonna’s RimeTatiana CrivelliChapter 4: The Rime: A Textual Conundrum?Maria Serena SapegnoChapter 5: Vittoria Colonna and LanguageHelena SansonPart III: Vittoria Colonna and the ArtsChapter 6: Vittoria Colonna: The Pictorial EvidenceGaudenz FreulerChapter 7: Colonna and Michelangelo: Drawings and PaintingsMaria ForcellinoChapter 8: Musical Settings of the RimeAnne PiéjusPart IV: Vittoria Colonna and ReligionChapter 9: Prudential Friendship and Religious Reform: Vittoria Colonna and Gasparo ContariniStephen BowdChapter 10: Vittoria Colonna and Bernardino OchinoEmidio CampiChapter 11: Religious Prose WritingsEleonora CarinciPart V: Vittoria Colonna as Literary Model and Authority FigureChapter 12: The Lyric Voices of Vittoria Colonna and the Women of the Giolito Anthologies, 1545–1559Diana RobinChapter 13: The Exemplary Vittoria ColonnaVirginia CoxBibliography Index