After refusing several offers of marriage for Vittoria, her father betrothed her to Francesco Peretti, a man of no position, but a nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who was regarded as likely to become pope.

[1] Vittoria was admired and worshipped by the cleverest and most brilliant men in Rome, and being luxurious and extravagant although poor, she and her husband were soon plunged in debt.

[1] But her good fortune aroused much jealousy, and attempts were made to annul the marriage; she was imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo[1] and only liberated through the intervention of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.

Vittoria, overwhelmed with grief, went to live in retirement at Padua, where she was followed by Lodovico Orsini, a relation of her late husband and a servant of the Venetian republic, to arrange amicably for the division of the property.

[citation needed] A tennis ball called the Beautiful White Devil is named after her in A Room with a View.