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Some time in 1540 or 1541, a bound manuscript copy of a selection of VittoriaColonna's published and unpublished sonnets was sent to Marguerite d'Angouleme, Queen of Navarre, who had been requesting a copy of the poet's work via the French ambassador to Rome, George d'Armagnac. Some doubt lingers over the precise role that the poet herself took in the preparation of this manuscript gift. The correspondence relating to the dispatching of the manuscript has been attributed to Carlo Gualteruzzi, who on various occasions seems to have acted as Colonna's literary agent or secretary, a fact which has led some critics to assume that the project was his own, the poet merely providing access to her work.1 However, Colonna's apparent distance from the sending of the manuscript can justifiably be ascribed to a desire for the necessary aristocratic detachment from the indignity of self-promotion, as well perhaps as a more 'feminine' need for modesty and decorum. This manuscript and another one prepared for Michelangelo at around the same time appear in fact to have been the only instances in which Colonna was involved in the dissemination of a body of work as a gift to close friends.2 It was the French queen who initiated a correspondence between the two women, in which they wrote of their deep faith and spiritual concerns and gave expression to the high esteem in which they held each other. In keeping with her devout and unworldly role as a pious widow, as well as in recognition of the other woman's superior status, Colonna positions herself in her letters as vastly inferior to Navarre, and often refers to the great honour that the other has done her in seeking her out as a correspondent. Navarre in turn adopts a tone of equal self-abasement, claiming that she in fact is the imperfect one of the two, 'per il dentro io mi sento si contraria alla vostra buona openione', and expresses the hope that she will be elevated onto a higher spiritual plane through her contact with Colonna: 'mediante le vostre buone preghiere elle mi saranno uno sprone per uscire del luoco, ove io sono, et cominciar a correre appresso di voi.'3 A self-conscious and insistent emphasis on the two See for example Angela Dillon Bussi, 'Vittoria Colonna: Rime (Sonetti)', in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin undMuse Michelangelos, Catalogue to the Exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, curated by Silvia Ferino-Pagden, 25 February-25 May 1997 (Vienna: Skira, 1997), pp. 202-04. Tobia Toscano argues that the attribution to Gualteruzzi of the letter concerning Navarre's manuscript is in fact extremely uncertain. He puts forward the hypothesis that it was Pietro Bembo, perhaps in agreement with Gualteruzzi, who organised th...
