TASSO, TORQUATO. – Born to Bernardo and Porzia de’ Rossi in Sorrento on 11 March 1544, he spent his early childhood in Naples with his mother and sister, whom he left (the former never to see again, the latter not until 1577 in a romantically adventurous and elegiac encounter) around 1554 to join his father, who had been in exile since 1552. After a brief stay in Bergamo with his father’s family, he reunited with his father in Pesaro and Urbino, where, in the refined court of Guidubaldo II della Rovere and in the company of the highly learned Bernardo, he began his experience of courts and letters. In 1559 he was in Venice with Bernardo (who had moved there to oversee the printing of the *Amadigi*): it was there that he almost certainly began composing *Gerusalemme*, the first draft of what was to become his greatest poem. In 1560–61 he moved to Padua to study law, but did not abandon what was now revealed as an irresistible poetic vocation; thus, while writing his first verses inspired by love for Lucrezia Bendidio and Laura Peperara, he undertook and completed *Rinaldo*, a twelve-canto poem in ottave, published in Venice in 1562 with his father’s permission.
In Padua his literary formation benefited from the conversations and teachings of Sperone Speroni, Francesco Piccolomini, Carlo Sigonio, and the environment of the Eterei, the academy founded by Scipione Gonzaga, with whom the poet formed a close friendship. In 1567, among the *Rime* of the Accademici Eterei, T. published his first significant group of lyrics. By the end of 1565, having entered the service of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, he had moved to Ferrara. There, in the sumptuous Este court, where he participated with brilliant success, and in the Ferrarese academy, where he was to deliver a lecture—
TASSO, TORQUATO. – Portrait, Painting by A. Allori (perhaps in 1590). Florence, Uffizi Gallery.
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