Colonna, Vittoria (1492–1547) Italian poet
A member of an illustrious Roman Ghibelline family, she
was betrothed at the age of four and at 19 married to Fer-
dinando d’Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, to whom she was
devoted. After his untimely death (1525) she lived mainly
in convents, eventually settling in Rome; she became as-
sociated with religious reformers, though she remained
within the Church through the influence of her adviser,
Cardinal Reginald POLE. Her many literary friendships and
correspondents included Aretino, Bembo, Castiglione,
Sannazaro, and particularly MICHELANGELO, who ad-
dressed a number of poems and letters to her. Her own
poems, Rime (published several times between 1538 and
1544), are mainly Petrarchan sonnets influenced by
Bembo and are concerned with the memory of her hus-
band and with Neoplatonic and religious subjects.
Colonna family A noble Roman family, whose members
were senators and cardinals from the 13th century. During
the 14th century the Colonna’s bitterest rivals for power
were the Caetani and Orsini families. As Pope Martin V
(1417–31), Oddone Colonna increased his family’s wealth
and power with generous grants of land in the Papal
States. The next pope, EUGENIUS IV (1431–47), tried
unsuccessfully to force the family to return its estates, and
over a century of bitter conflict with the papacy followed,
especially when the BORGIA FAMILYwas in the ascendancy.
The power of the Colonna was eventually brought under
control and the family was reconciled with the papacy in
the later 16th century.
colossal order (giant order) An architectural device in
which columns or pilasters rise for more than one story in
a facade. Originally devised by the Romans and used on
such edifices as triumphal arches, the style was revived
during the Renaissance, being reintroduced by Michelan-
gelo who first incorporated it into the Capitol at Rome.
After the Renaissance the colossal order was taken up by
the Baroque movement and, later, by such 18th-century
architects as Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Columbus, Christopher (Cristoforo Colombo,
Cristóbal Colón) (1451–1506) Italian explorer, credited
with the discovery of the Americas
Columbus was born in Genoa and initially joined the fam-
ily wool-weaving business, having received little educa-
tion. At 14 he went to sea, and by 1477 had been to the
Levant, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, and England. After set-
tling in Lisbon, he married in 1479 and solicited patron-
age for an Atlantic expedition in search of a route to Asia.
The king of Portugal refused, and Columbus left for Spain
(1484). Through the aid of influential churchmen,
Columbus eventually convinced Queen Isabella of the va-
lidity of his ideas; in turn, she persuaded King Ferdinand.
On August 3, 1492 Columbus sailed from Saltes, an island
near Palos, with 120 men and three small ships, led by the
Santa Maria. He went first to the Canary Islands, then
sailed westwards. In October he reached the Bahamas,
much to the relief of his terrified crew. He proceeded to
Cuba and Haiti (Hispaniola), where he founded the first
Spanish settlement in the New World. On his return to
Spain with gold, plants, birds, and six Indians, he was im-
mediately made a grandee.
On September 24, 1493 Columbus set sail again. Dur-
ing the next three years he refounded the Hispaniola
colony at Isabella and thoroughly explored and attempted
to chart the West Indies. His third voyage in 1498
achieved landfall on the South American mainland, but
mischief-makers persuaded Ferdinand to supplant
Columbus as governor of Hispaniola, and Francisco de
Bobadilla, the new governor, sent Columbus back to Spain
in chains (1500). On his arrival, however, he was tri-
umphantly vindicated, and in 1502 he set off to search for
a route to Asia between Cuba and South America. This
failed for obvious reasons, and Columbus returned (1504)
to Spain much weakened in health. He died at Valladolid,
but in 1542 his remains were transferred to Hispaniola.
Columbus’s own log of his first journey, or the para-
phrase of it by Bartolomé de LAS CASAS—opinions differ as
to the status of the text—was edited and translated by
J. H. Cohen along with other documents in The Four Voy-
ages of Christopher Columbus (1969). Columbus’s son Fer-
dinand (Fernando Colón) wrote the earliest biography of
his father, translated into English by Benjamin Keen as
The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, by His Son
Ferdinand (1959; 2nd ed., with new introduction, 1992).
Since the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage his
achievements have often been negatively reassessed; it has
been pointed out that he was not the first European to
reach the Americas and, irrationally, he is held responsible
for the genocidal impact of the Spanish conquest upon the
native Americans.
Further reading: Miles H. Davidson, Columbus Then
and Now: A Life Reexamined (Norman, Okla.: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1997); Mary Ellen Jones (ed.), Christo-
pher Columbus and His Legacy: Opposing Viewpoints (San
Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1992); Samuel E. Mori-
son, Christopher Columbus: Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1942), as Admiral of the
Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus(Boston, Mass.:
Little Brown, 1942).comedy There is little evidence of any significant staged
comedy between the death of the Roman playwright TER-
ENCE(159 BCE) and the late Middle Ages, when comic el-
ements reemerged in the rough clowning that formed
part of the mystery play and in the comic Vice of the
morality play and the later INTERLUDE. In these, comic
passages ridiculed everyday foibles, favorite subjects being
love and money—that is, infidelity and financial chi-ccoommeeddyy 111111