Sant'Onofrio on the Janiculum

After a final trip to Naples between June and November 1594 in connection with the printing of his Discorsi del poema eroico, Tasso returned to Rome, his health deteriorating in the final weeks of that year. The letters written during this time contain many signs of profound suffering and the idea that death was imminent. Although busy writing his Giudicio on the new Gerusalemme, and to some extent attracted by the Aldobrandini family’s promise of poetic laurels to be awarded to him at the Campidoglio, Tasso took stock of his life in unmistakeably negative terms in a famous letter to his friend Antonio Costantini:

The time is gone when I should be speaking of my adverse fortune, never mind the world’s ingratitude, which even wishes for me a pauper’s burial; and I went on thinking that the glory that… this century will achieve as a result of my writings, would not leave me entirely without reward (translated from T. Tasso, Le lettere, edited by C. Guasti, 5 vols, Florence, Le Monnier, 1852-55, vol. V, 203).

He also wrote a letter to his former patron, Alfonso d’Este, in a symbolic reconstruction of the painful conflicts of two decades earlier. Finally he asked to be taken to the monastery of Sant’Onofrio, on the Janiculum hill, “to commence, from this elevated spot, and with the conversation of these devout fathers, my conversation in heaven” (translated from T. Tasso, Le lettere, edited by C. Guasti, 5 vols, Florence, Le Monnier, 1852-55, vol. V, 203). Here he died on 25 April and was buried the same day in the monastery Chapel, beneath the main alter, with a solemn funeral.