ABSTRACT
The first episode when Vittoria Colonna openly revealed her position in favour of a renewed religiosity was when the new Franciscan Order of Capuchin Friars was established in the 1520s, but struggled to obtain the official papal recognition. No other woman in the history of the Italian Renaissance, though, benefitted from such fame and admiration as Vittoria Colonna, whose poetic distinction and 'secure judgement' were celebrated by the most prominent literary, political and religious figures of the time. After 1538, Colonna became the most published and admired woman writer of the sixteenth century in Italy, with twelve editions of her love and spiritual sonnets published when still alive, and with a published commentary on the 1543 edition of her Rime. When the neo-Platonic doctrine of Love as desire for divine Beauty was consciously redirected towards the eternal mercy of God, Petrarchism would increasingly coincide in Colonna's lyric voice with evangelism.
