Veronica Gambara

Born in Pralboino (now in the Province of Brescia), in Lombardy, Italy, Gambara came from a distinguished family, one of the seven children of Count Gianfrancesco da Gambara and Alda Pio da Carpi.^[1] Her family contained a number of distinguished female intellectuals, including her great-aunts, the humanist poets Ginevre and Isotta Nogarola.^[3]: 164 Veronica was also a niece of Emilia Pia, the principal female interlocutor of Baldessare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano.^{[4]: 160–61}

Gambara received a humanist education, studying Latin, Greek, philosophy, theology and scripture.^{[4]: 160 [3]: 170} In 1502, at the age of 17, she began corresponding with the leading neo-Petrarchan, Pietro Bembo, who became her poetic mentor two years later when she began sending him her compositions.^{[4]: 161 [3]: 170}

In 1509, at the age of 24, she married her cousin, the 50-year-old widower Giberto VII, Count of Correggio, in Amalfi.^[1] They had two sons, Ippolito [it] was born in 1510 and Girolamo in 1511.^[1] After Giberto's death in 1518, she took charge of the state (including management of Correggio's condottieri), as well as the education of her two sons and step-daughter Costanza.^{[5]: 23 [3]: 171} Her niece, Camilla Valenti, daughter of Violante the sister of Veronica, was also putatively a poet.^[6]

Under Gambara's rule, the small court of Correggio became something of a salon, visited by such important figures as Pietro Bembo, Gian Giorgio Trissino, Marcantonio Flaminio, Ludovico Ariosto, and Titian.^{[3]: 170 [5]: 25} Previously aligned with French king, Francis I, Gambara allied Correggio with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.^[1] She personally received Charles V at her estate in 1530, when he signed a treaty guaranteeing Correggio would not again be besieged, and a second time in 1533.^[1] The treaty was broken, however, in 1538 when Galeotto Pico II, Count of Mirandola and Concordia, launched an attack on Correggio.^[5]: 24 Gambara organized a successful defense of the city, and between 1546 and 1550, saw that Charles V paid for improved fortifications.^{[5]: 24 [1]}

She died on 13 June 1550 in Correggio, Italy.^[1]

Approximately 80 of her poems and 150 of her letters are extant, and a complete English translation of her poems was published in 2014.^[7] Little of her poetry was published during her lifetime, though it circulated in manuscript and was well-known throughout Italy by 1530.^[3]: 169 Gambara primarily composed poetry in Italian falling into four categories: poems on political issues, devotional poems, Virgilian pastoral, and love poems to her husband.^{[3]: 170–71} Her political poems are particularly notable for expressing a concept of Italy as an entity centuries prior to unification.^[5]: 24 Most of her poems are sonnets, although she also wrote madrigals, ballads, and stanze in ottava rima. She also composed a number of poems in Latin, including an ode for Charles V with which she greeted the fellow sovereign on his visit to Correggio in 1530.^{[3]: 170–71}

Gambara was in correspondence with a number of important scholars and poets of the day. Beyond the above-mentioned Pietro Bembo, she corresponded with the poet Bernardo Tasso, the writer Matteo Bandello, and author and playwright Pietro Aretino (who would come to slander her as a "laureated harlot," an attack Gambara simply ignored).^{[5]: 24 [3]: 171} She also exchanged letters with Charles V.^[1] Gambara's letters, never intended for publication, shed light on her personal life. In a 1549 letter to Ludovico Rosso she admits to exhaustion with her responsibilities, and expresses a desire to retire to a solitary country life.^[1][5]: 25