Vittoria Colonna
1490-1547 16th century
Changing your subject once you discover what is worth singing.
Who was Vittoria Colonna?
Married at nineteen to the Marquis of Pescara, widowed at thirty-five, she refused to remarry and spent the rest of her life between convents, writing. Her Rime spirituali circulated throughout Italy; Michelangelo addressed sonnets to her and gave her drawings. Close to the spirituali, those Catholics who hoped for a reform through grace, she died before the Inquisition turned its full attention on her friends.
In their own words
Let the holy nails be my pens from now on; the precious blood my pure ink; the sacred bloodless body my ruled page, that I may write for myself what he endured.
I do not seek to crown my temples with laurel, nor to rise with Icarus and then fall from on high into my second death.
It is not the time that is unhappy, it is I, wretched, who do not yet burn with faith as they burned to see you in that age.