Not long afterwards her husband died as a consequence of his wounds and Vittoria was broken-hearted. The letters which they had written to each other show how much of a love match this was and all the sixteen years of married life there seems to have been nothing to disturb it. Vittoria's only consolation now was in religion, and she thought of entering a convent, but it was felt that she could accomplish much more good in the world and a special Papal brief was issued permitting her to spend as much time as she wished in convents, but forbidding superiors to allow her to take the veil until the poignancy of her grief subsided and she might be able to make up her mind without being too much overborne by her sense of loss. Most of the rest of her life was spent in convents or in almost conventual seclusion. She wrote a series of poems, many of which are religious. A long series constitutes a sort of _In Memoriam_ for her dead husband. They are written in very charming Italian verse and a well-known critic and writer on Italian literature has described these poems "as penetrated with genuine feeling. They have that dignity and sweetness which belong to the spontaneous utterances of a noble heart." During the last fifteen years of her life she lived very retired in Rome and exercised her profound influence over many of the great men of the Renaissance and particularly over Michelangelo. Some idea of the place that she held in the cultured society of Italy at this time may be gathered from the fact that in 1528 Castiglione submitted his _"Il Cortigiano"_ to her in manuscript for her approval and criticism. She kept it for a considerable time, read portions of it to her friends, submitted others to them and then returned it with the highest praise. She declared that she was quite jealous of the persons that are quoted in the book, even though they were dead. A writer who knew this period very thoroughly and who had studied particularly the lives of the women of the Renaissance declared: "Vittoria Colonna was indeed a woman to be proud of: untouched by scandal, unspoiled by praise, incapable of any ungenerous action, unconvicted of one uncharitable word. Long in the midst of such religious and political dissensions {298} as divided and uprooted families, she yet preserved in all the relations of life that jewel of perfect loyalty which does not ask to be justified."