At the Gonzaga court

“I am free, by the grace of His Highness the Prince of Mantua” (translated from T. Tasso, Le lettere, edited by C. Guasti, 5 vols, Florence, Le Monnier, 1852-55, vol. III, 3). Thus Tasso referred to his release from Sant’Anna, in July 1586, through the intervention of Vincenzo Gonzaga who had taken it upon himself to keep watch on the poet’s behaviour. Shortly afterwards, Tasso arrived in Mantua, the initial period following his release coinciding with a period of great enthusiasm, during which he completed Bernardo’s Floridante, corrected his own poems and discourses, and above all set to work on completing the Torrismondo. Nonetheless, his “supervised” condition prevented him from settling in the Gonzaga Court. By September he was showing signs of restlessness, which intensified in the following months, during which time he expressed interest in returning to Ferrara, although sometimes his interest was in Rome, or Florence. At this stage he received a lucrative offer from Genoa to deliver a public reading of Aristotle, and made a short trip to Bergamo in the summer of 1587 to attend to the printing of the Floridante. When the Torrismondo was published in September 1587, Tasso felt free to leave Mantua, and after short stays in Modena and Bologna, he arrived in Rome in mid-November, as a guest of Scipione Gonzaga. Discontent with his circumstances in Rome, he returned to Mantua in the early months of 1591, and started work on the planned complete edition of his works. After a serious illness that summer, he also embarked on the Genealogia di casa Gonzaga, an elegy of the Gonzaga family which remained unpublished. In November 1591, Osanna printed the Prima parte of his Rime, in which the texts were accompanied by Tasso’s detailed self-commentary. Shortly afterwards, after the death of Gregory XIV, Tasso left Mantua to accompany Vincenzo Gonzaga to Rome. At the end of that year, however, he declined to return to Mantua, withdrawing definitively from the patronage of the prince who had secured his release from Sant’Anna.