Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547)

Influenced by humanism, she was born into the influential roman family of Colonna. Surrounded by artists and “of faultless mores” (terms used in her biographies), she will befriend and become the subject of Michelangelo’s admiration. Attentive to the ideas of the Reform and in contact with the most renown literary references, she will be celebrated by Ludovico Ariosto in a work of 38,000 verses that will be distributed around Europe from 1532. In mourning, she publishes “Rhyme”, which with be prominent during the 16^th century, then forgotten.