Riotous and deliriously glorious...

A private, intimate drawing reveals a clue to the mystery

Michelangelo created art for and with with his personal deity, Vittoria Colonna. This post is about a small black chalk drawing on cardboard by Michelangelo called The Pietà for Vittoria Colonna.

A man within a woman, no, a god, speaks from her mouth… 

Michelangelo created many things for Vittoria, to capture their connection so future witnesses would understand his love for her. These works reveal hints pointing to the mystery of what happened to Vittoria’s body after she died, and what Michelangelo painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, straight from their shared spiritual imagination. Amid all those muscular, naked figures, he painted their minds, hearts and souls there for us to see, if we know how to look.

On a dreary, drizzly day in the middle of April last year, I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston to see this drawing, a private devotional so small that Vittoria could travel with it and look at it through a magnifying glass for hours. She wrote Michelangelo a letter to declare this image crucified all others in her mind — a compliment so perfect it echoes through the centuries. 

How did this piece end up in Boston? The museum, a faux Italian Renaissance villa, was created by Isabella Stewart Gardner, the “Queen of Fenway Court,” as a place for the education and enjoyment of the public forever. Who is this woman who built herself an Italian Renaissance villa in Boston? 

On March 18, 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the Gardner Museum in the single largest property theft in the world. The investigation is still ongoing, and the museum is offering a $10 million reward for anyone who has information leading to the recovery of the works. Because of this theft and fear of it happening again, the Michelangelo on display is a replica. The original is safely stored on the premises. 

Like Vittoria Colonna, Gardner spent a portion of her life as a childless widow. Vittoria was unable to have children. When Gardner lost her baby son, her husband took her on a global adventure that ignited a spark in her life.

Why did Gardner love The Pietà for Vittoria Colonna? Was it because Gardner wanted to study it, line by line, the way Vittoria once did, in her own chapel? Was it because she appreciated the radical reimagining of dogmatic iconography, the first time any western artist dared to visualize Mary as a woman, angry at a God who would make such a sacrifice? Instead of holding Christ on her lap, Mary’s hands are raised to the sky while two cherubs support her son’s body. To modern eyes, the display of female intellect, humanity and anger might seem subtle. But back then, these things were not permitted in the public sphere, and the church owned the iconography. Artists were not free to play with it. But this artist was Michelangelo, and the drawing was private.  

Vittoria Colonna’s personality is on display in this image. Michelangelo didn’t just draw it for her, and he didn’t just draw what she imagined. He drew her.

On my way to look for the drawing, I passed a portrait of Vittoria’s maternal grandmother. I recognized the eerie yet serene face of Battista Sforza, who was highly educated and in turn educated her daughter, Agnese, who educated her daughter, Vittoria Colonna. The great intellectuals of Vittoria’s time constantly praised her “male brains,” ignoring her rare privilege in being born in a line of educated women.

Vittoria widely applied her dazzling intellect. She was her husband’s war adviser. As a woman she could not inherit her family’s land, but she ran it on her brother’s behalf, administering justice and overseeing engineering projects across their many towns. In her husband’s absence, she conducted salons at Ischia. She saved lives after the sack of Rome by turning the rock into a ward when luminary exiles began to arrive. She nursed many of them back from the black pit of despair and ill health to do their best work once again.

In Michelangelo’s drawing, we see Vittoria’s emotion and courage to ask questions. A woman asking questions was considered so dangerous that women were not permitted to speak in the public sphere. Yet Vittoria was the first woman in Italy to have a book of poems published under her own name. She described fame as a serpent sinking twin fangs into her breast. The more her star rose, the more threatening she became, until her life was in danger. Yet Michelangelo drew her questioning God. By this time, Vittoria was a pivotal figure in the religious reform movement and the Inquisitor’s Office was gaining momentum.

Gardner also acquired a letter Vittoria wrote to Pietro Aretino, an outspoken critic of powerful people and prolific blackmailer, urging him to return to spiritual matters. Gardner purchased Michelangelo’s drawing and Vittoria’s letter to Aretino for next to nothing because in the early 1900s, Americans hadn’t yet taken an interest in Renaissance art. 

Aretino once wrote a letter to Michelangelo criticizing the nudity in The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His hope was that Michelangelo would want to avoid public criticism of his masterpiece, and would give Aretino a drawing in exchange for him backing off. In 1892, biographer John Addington Symonds noted the “malignancy” of this abusive letter questioning Michelangelo’s morals, and it was “obviously intended to hurt and insult Michelangelo” through “innuendo and direct abuse.” 

“Aretino used every means he could devise to wound and irritate a sensitive nature,” Symonds wrote.

Maybe you know the type.

No one thinks of how much blood it costs

Above all, I believe Gardner’s passion for this piece was captured in a line of Dante, “No one thinks of how much blood it costs,” written vertically on the cross.

This line had many meanings to Vittoria and Michelangelo, who both memorized Dante’s work. It also had meaning to Gardner, who had her own intimate friendship built around a shared passion for Dante. Gardner’s friend, F. Marion Crawford, was described in a biography as “a darling of the gods, exceedingly handsome, tall, well-built, with blazing blue eyes and very regular features, an excellent brain and universal facility.” Their relationship is captured in a special case in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and in a photograph of their clasped hands reaching as if across time. This story reveals their shared love of each other and Dante, with echoes of the relationship between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna, which history infuses with romantic overtones largely because we don’t have a language or mental model for the kind of close intellectual, spiritual and psychological connection shared by people whose connection to each other can’t be neatly categorized. 

Gardner saw, in Vittoria Colonna, the ultimate Renaissance woman. Dynamic, passionate, willing to connect on the deepest level, to question and above all, to feel. Her acquisition of ThePietà for Vittoria Colonna makes perfect sense. And I happened to be there when the museum’s famous gleaming orange nasturtium display was hanging from the windows in the villa’s courtyard, cascading down into the garden. Gardner started this tradition in 1904 for her April birthday. Vittoria was also born in April. The stunning tradition has been lovingly kept alive to celebrate the Queen of Fenway Court and bring bright spring to a winter-chilled city. Objects in the gift shop bear Gardner’s quote:

My garden is riotous, unholy, deliriously glorious! I wish you were here.

I planted nasturtiums in my garden for the first time after this experience. The vines went wild, neon orange bursts on gorgeous green vines. Every flower carried the memory of these women, so alive they remain vibrant to this day.