Entwined destinies

The following story is of no ordinary artistic commission. It may best be described as a chain reaction, set in motion by an exceptional woman and involving a large cast of characters. A number of contributions to the present volume eloquently frame Vittoria Colonna as progenitor and exemplar, at once spiritual and literary. In this essay, I would like to introduce a devotional model of her own: Colonna's most inspiring source of emulation (matched only by Catherine of Alexandria and the Virgin Mary herself)—Mary Magdalene. The story also features a cohort of male protagonists of crossed destinies: patrons, painters and a string of intermediaries, brokers and agents facilitating the commission; their various relationships to the Marchioness of Pescara, direct or indirect, serving as the ligatures that bind them. United in partnership within this group is another pairing: that of Michelangelo and Jacopo da Pontormo, two artists joined in collaboration twice within a year, at one point even working under one roof. Along the way, I hope we might rediscover a new complexity and nuance in commonly used terms like ‘patronage’ and ‘authorship’, as the role of mediators in the first case and copies in the second are key to understanding artistic production and notions of value in this period.

Vittoria Colonna was recognized in her lifetime as a poetic innovator, a catalyst of Catholic reform and as a paragon of piety (Fig. 10.1).