After the death of that mysterious phantom, her husband, says Zilioli, Tullia left Rome in search of "fresh fields and pastures new." We can only know that this was after 1540. But it must have been much after this that she took up her residence in Florence. For the same writer tells us, that she was then both in years and appearance pretty nearly an old woman.[15] In 1562 she was, according to the date we have assigned to her birth, only fifty–two or three, or thereabouts. And she must have resided in Florence several years prior to that date. For she lived there, we are told, under the patronage of Cosmo's Duchess Eleonora of Toledo, who died in that year. So that she could not have been much more than half–way between forty and fifty, when she appeared to be "half an old woman."
Supposing her to have gone to Florence about 1555, and to have left Rome not long after 1540, there is a space of some twelve or fifteen years, during which we very nearly lose all sight of her.
Very nearly, but not quite; for we hear of long residences at Venice and Ferrara; and can trace her to Bologna by a phrase in an epigram too coarsely abusive to be reproduced, which Pasquin fired after her when she quitted Rome. Little cared the brilliant poetess—errant for pasquinades let off behind her back, while her course from one pleasure–loving court to another was tracked, as Zilioli writes, by "an infinite number of lovers, especially among the poets, who pursued her like a pack of greyhounds, striving to bring her down by volleys of odes and sonnets," to which our not insensible Sappho was ready enough to reply in similar strain.
Here, as a specimen of "her make," as the Italians say, is a sonnet addressed by her to Pietro Manelli, of Florence, who was one of her most devoted slaves:
"Qual vaga Filomena, che fuggita È dall'odiata gabbia, ed in superba Vista sen va tra gli arboscelli e l'erba Tornata in libertate, e lieta vita; Ed io dagli amorosi lacci uscita, Schernendo ogni martir, e pena acerba Dell'incredibil duol, che in se riserba Qual ha per troppo amar l'alma smarrita; Ben avev'io ritolte, ahi stella fiera! Dal tempio di Ciprigna le mie spoglie E di lor premio me n'andava altera. Quando a me Amor; le tue ritrose voglie Muterò, disse; e femmi prigioniera Di tua virtù, per rinovar mie doglie."