Please join us the 21st of November at 6:30PM for a talk by Professor Ramie Targoff of Brandeis University about her recent book, Rennaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. Best known as Michaelangelo’s closest friend, Colonna was significant in her own right as a celebrated poet, a deft politician, and a standout personality of her time. Targoff’s brilliant retelling of Colonna’s life provides a view of the Renaissance that is unlike any other.
Event Details
Date & Time: 21th of November, 6:30PM
Location: 134 Chestnut Hill Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
About Professor Targoff
Professor Ramie Targoff of Brandeis University will speak about her recent book, Rennaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. Best known as Michaelangelo’s closest friend, Colonna was significant in her own right as a celebrated poet, a deft politician, and a standout personality of her time. Targoff’s brilliant retelling of Colonna’s life provides a view of the Renaissance that is unlike any other.
Ramie Targoff is a professor of English, the cochair of the Italian studies program, and the Jehuda Reinharz Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University. Her other works include Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England; John Donne, Body and Soul; and Posthumous Love: Eros and the Afterlife in Renaissance England. She lives with her husband and son in Cambridge.
Rennaissance Women: The Life of Vittoria Colonna (2018)
From The New Yorker:
In this richly realized biography, Targoff explores the life of the sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman, poet, and patron Vittoria Colonna. Renowned for her “spiritual power,” Colonna dreamed of becoming a nun, but the Pope so valued her as a secular ally that he wouldn’t allow it. She turned to writing, becoming the first woman to publish a book of poems in Italy. Had she not been so talented and so virtuous, the challenge she posed might well have been too great for her male contemporaries to bear. As it was, she befriended many of the pivotal figures of the day, most famously Michelangelo. She is often described dismissively as his “muse,” but Targoff shows that Colonna was a true intellectual partner, engaging him in vigorous discussions of art.