to be her friend was slightly
dangerous. It is obvious that Vittoria's religion was of an
evangelical type, inconsistent with the dogmas developed by the
Tridentine Council; and it is probable that, like her friend
Contarini, she advocated a widening rather than a narrowing of Western
Christendom. To bring the Church back to purer morals and sincerity of
faith was their aim. They yearned for a reformation and regeneration
from within.

In all these matters, Michelangelo, the devout student of the Bible
and the disciple of Savonarola, shared Vittoria's sentiments. His
nature, profoundly and simply religious from the outset, assumed a
tone of deeper piety and habitual devotion during the advance of
years. Vittoria Colonna's influence at this period strengthened his
Christian emotions, which remained untainted by asceticism or
superstition. They were further united by another bond, which was
their common interest in poetry. The Marchioness of Pescara was justly
celebrated during her lifetime as one of the most natural writers of
Italian verse. Her poems consist principally of sonnets consecrated to
the memory of her husband, or composed on sacred and moral subjects.
Penetrated by genuine feeling, and almost wholly free from literary
affectation, they have that dignity and sweetness which belong to the
spontaneous utterances of a noble heart. Whether she treats of love or
of religion, we find the same simplicity and sincerity of style. There
is nothing in her pious meditations that a Christian of any communion
may not read with profit, as the heartfelt outpourings of a soul
athirst for God and nourished on the study of the gospel.

Michelangelo preserved a large number of her sonnets, which he kept
together in one volume. Writing to his nephew Lionardo in 1554, he
says: "Messer Giovan Francesco (Fattucci) asked me about a month ago
if I possessed any writings of the Marchioness. I have a little book
bound in parchment, which she gave me some ten years ago. It has one
hundred and three sonnets, not counting another forty she afterwards
sent on paper from Viterbo. I had these bound into the same book, and
at that time I used to lend them about to many persons, so that they
are all of them now in print. In addition to these poems I have many
letters which she wrote from Orvieto and Viterbo. These then are the
writings I possess of the Marchioness." He composed several pieces,
madrigals and sonnets, under the genial influenc