VITTORIA COLONNA, daughter of the high constable of Naples, and wife of the celebrated warrior Davalos Marquese de Pescara, the faithful general of the Emperor Charles V. Her talents, her beauty, and her virtues, have been extolled by Michel Angelo, Ariosto, and other celebrated poets. When Pescara died in 1548, his accomplished widow retired to a convent, and there indulged her melancholy and her religious sentiments in beautiful poetic effusions to the memory of her husband, and on spiritual subjects. These appeared at Venice in 1548, under the title of Rime Spirituali di Vittoria Colonna. She was born in 1490, and died at Rome in 1549. Tiraboschi remarks, that she was called "a model for Italian matrons."