Filonico Alicarnasseo, who knew her and wrote her life, leaves one to understand, in spite of his care in the use of words, that she was ugly. "When she was married to the Marquis of Pescara," he says, "she applied herself to the development of her mental gifts; for, as she did not possess great beauty, she instructed herself in literature, in order to feel assured of that immortal beauty which, unlike the other, never fades." She was passionately intellectual. In a sonnet she herself says that "coarse senses, powerless to form the harmony which produces the pure love of noble souls, never awakened in her either pleasure or suffering. …" And she adds: "Bright flame, raise my heart so high that base thoughts offend it." She was in no way made to be
entwined with a light veil, is, like her breast, bare. She has a sulky and indifferent air.
These two medals, produced at different ages, have the following characteristics in common: a contraction of the nostrils and the somewhat sulky upper lip, and a small, tightly-closed, disdainful mouth. The face, as a whole, is expressive of a calm, without illusions and without joy.Frey contends, in a somewhat hazardous manner, that he has discovered Vittoria's portrait in a strange drawing by Michael Angelo on the back of a sonnet—a beautiful and sad drawing which Michael Angelo would have refused, in that case, to show to any one. The figure is that of an aged woman, nude to the waist, and with empty, pendent breasts. The head has not grown old—it is upright, pensive, and proud. A necklace surrounds the long and delicate neck; the hair, gathered up, is enclosed in a cap, which is attached under the chin, hides the ears and forms a sort of helmet. Facing her the head of an old man, resembling Michael Angelo, looks at her—for the last time. Vittoria Colonna had just died when this drawing was made. The sonnet which accompanies it is the fine poem on the death of Vittoria commencing with the words: "Quand' el ministro de sospir mie tanti …" Frey has reproduced the drawing in his edition of the " Poems of Michael Angelo," p. 385.