Michelangelo s poems to Vittoria Colonna and the religiosity in the 1540s

• Grant number: 11/21086-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2012
• End date: November 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Eduardo Ornelas Berriel
• Grantee: Leandro Vinícius Miranda Cauneto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence, 1475 - Rome, 1564) was a sculptor, painter, architect, and also poet. His poetry was impregnated by his personal relationships: he wrote his poems for his closest friends and sent them as a gift. One of those persons was Vittoria Colonna (1490 - 1547), the marquise of Pescara, with whom the artist had established an intense debate about arts and religion. According to Charles de Tolnay, one of the greatest scholars on Michelangelo, Colonna was responsible for introducing to the artist the new theological ideas that were being discussed in Italy, in the context of religious reformation. Those ideas, Waldensian in essence, had a great influence on Michelangelo's art of this period, especially on his poems, which were dedicated to the marquise, between 1536 and 1547. His poems, generally about love and religion, are the expression of his thoughts on religious questions of his time. They also represent an aesthetical novelty, as Glauco Cambon shows, if compared to the florentine lyrical tradition, to which Michelangelo belonged.(AU)