Guest of Scipione Gonzaga in Rome

After the Torrismondo had been published, Tasso left Mantua, going first to Modena, then Bologna and Loreto and finally to Rome at the beginning of November, a guest at the home of Scipione Gonzaga. Upon the suggestion of Vincenzo Gonzaga, who had recently become Duke of Mantua and maintained his commitment to Alfonso II to keep Tasso under surveillance, Scipione, in agreement with Antonio Costantini, tried by various means to convince Tasso to return to the Gonzaga Court, inviting him on a journey to the Medici Court in Florence and encouraging him to go to Genoa and accept Angelo Grillo’s invitation to deliver a public reading of Aristotle. These invitations did not convince Tasso to leave Rome, and he was on the point of being forced to return to Mantua when, at the end of the year, authorization arrived from Ferrara in which Alfonso II declared was no longer concerned with Tasso, and freed Gonzaga of all commitments in respect of the poet. Tasso remained in Rome, now free of all surveillance, veiled or otherwise, but was unable to settle peacefully and did not receive from Sixtus V the recognition he desired.