Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty

Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’s Notable Men and Women

Bibliographic Data

ID10423264
AuthorsKenneth Gouwens (corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume68
Issue1
Pages33-97
Publication date2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRenaissance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-4338 • E-ISSN: 1935-0236
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/681308
OpenAlexW2317695013
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited74

In a dialogue drafted soon after the Sack of Rome (1527), Paolo Giovio details historical views of female dignity and assesses the beauty and talents of over 100 women in contemporary Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, and Rome. Unlike most such catalogues, Giovio’s seasons praise with explicit acknowledgment of physical, intellectual, and personal shortcomings. Yet it also celebrates Vittoria Colonna, who commissioned the work, as the ideal noblewoman. Giovio is unconventional in applying to this living woman a pattern of graphic physical description that Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bembo, and many others had followed in delineating fictional characters. This strategy exemplifies the latitude of representational possibilities that characterized Italian literature and art of the 1520s and 1530s. The dialogue also eloquently documents a crucial time in Colonna’s life when her verse commemoration of her husband coalesced with religious devotion, and when physical beauty could be seen to harmonize with other virtues to form a desirable and inspirational whole

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Beauty · Dignity · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Poetry · Praise · Theology · Virtue · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

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