ABSTRACT
In 1531, Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis del Vasto, a general in Charles V’s army, commissioned a cartoon of A Christ appearing to the Magdalene in the Garden from Michelangelo.1 It was for his aunt, Vittoria Colonna, the widow of Marchese di Pescara. She was one of Michelangelo’s dearest friends.2 The artist and the poet are thought to have first met at the court of Pope Leo X in 1517-1521.3 Certainly by 1530 or 1531 when Vittoria returned to Rome from her late husband’s family household in Ischia they had consolidated their friendship. During this time, while Michelangelo was working on The Last Judgement, Vittoria was living in the convent of San Silvestro in Capite where she established a salon which included poets, writers, theologians, artists and churchmen including Reginald Pole. She remained close friends with both men until her death in 1547.4 Condivi describes the relationship with the artist in his Life of Michelangelo
1 Vasari notes the commission thus: ‘For the Marquis del Vasto, moreover, he made the Cartoon of a noli me tangere … painted by Pontormo’. Vasari, Lives of The Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 5, p. 340.
