In 1544 the Colonna estates were confiscated by the pope, after a
contest between Paul III. and the powerful Colonnas, in which the
latter were defeated, and Vittoria retired to the Benedictine Convent of
St. Anna. Here her health failed. The celebrated physician and poet
Fracastoro said, "Would that a physician for her mind could be found!
Otherwise, the fairest light in this world will, from causes by no means
clear, be extinguished and taken from our eyes."
At the beginning of 1547 she became dangerously ill, and was conveyed to
the palace of her relative Giuliano Cesarini, the only one of her
kindred in Rome. She died towards the last of February, 1547, at the age
of fifty-seven.
She requested to be buried like the sisters with whom she last resided,
and so entirely were her wishes carried out that her place of sepulture
is unknown.
Michael Angelo staid beside her to the very last. When she was gone he
almost lost his senses. Says his pupil, Condivi, "He bore such a love to
her that I remember to have heard him say that he grieved at nothing so
much as that when he went to see her pass from this life he had not
kissed her brow or her face, as he kissed her hand. After her death he
frequently stood trembling and as if insensible."
He wrote several sonnets to her memory.
"When the prime mover of my many sighs
Heaven took through death from out her earthly place,
Nature, that never made so fair a face,
Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes.
O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!
O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace,
Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embrace
Thy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies.
Vainly did cruel Death attempt to stay
The rumor of thy virtuous renown,
That Lethe's waters could not wash away!
A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down,
Speak of thee, nor to thee would heaven convey,
Except through death, a refuge and a crown."