ACCORAMBONI, VITTORIA. - Of noble family, born in Gubbio in 1557, she soon moved to Rome, where in 1563 she was married to Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Felice Peretti, who later became Pope Sixtus V. Fickle, spendthrift, but beautiful, it seems that, urged on by her relatives and especially by her mother, she accepted the favors of Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, and plotted to free herself of her husband and marry him. Peretti was in fact murdered, and in 1581 she took refuge in Orsini's house. Imprisoned - because no one dared touch the Duke of Bracciano, by then the manifest instigator of the murder - and released on the promise that she would not enter into that criminal marriage, she instead entered into it publicly in the year 1584. When, however, Cardinal Peretti became pope, the two spouses hastened to take refuge in the territory of Venice, on Lake Garda. Sixtus V did not pursue them; but Paolo Giordano Orsini was struck down by death in 1585, said to be by poisoning at the hands of the Grand Duke of Florence. A. withdrew to Padua in that same year, and there was stabbed by Ludovico Orsini. She died with great courage and Christian piety.
Quadrio called her a poetess, and Mazzuchelli devoted an article to her; but she gave poetry only its subject (J. Webster, The Tragedy of P. L. Orsini). Novels were also written about her, one of which, very short, circulated in hundreds of copies that are commonly found in the libraries of Italy at the hands of copyists of the 16th and 17th centuries.