When Tasso arrived in Ferrara to enter the service of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, the city was preparing celebrations and festivities for Alfonso’s second marriage, to Barbara of Austria. The fascinating setting of this elegant city impressed itself on Tasso’s imagination (he was to recall it later in his Dialoghi) and to some extent marked his entire early period in Ferrara. In this lively cultural context (reconstructed in A. Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense nella seconda metà del secolo XVI, Città di Castello, Lapi, 1891), the Ariostan narrative tradition was matched with a tradition of pastoral fables, and literary figures such as Pigna and Guarini, Antonio Montecatini and Annibale Romei came into their own. Tasso appeared on the scene with the Goffredo as his major commitment, but meanwhile also producing a series of one-offs with a more immediate impact - lessons and discussions at the Ferrara Academy and lyrical poems celebrating various moments of court life – and organizing a series of performances, which culminated in the performance of the Aminta. The serene climate alluded to at several points in his pastoral drama was able to exist through the silencing of the crises emerging in court life at the time: on the one hand a decrease in influence and means, and on the other the question of succession within the House of Este, which substantially impacted the last three decades of sixteenth century Ferrara on account of the Duke’s sterility.

Ignazio Danti, Ferrara, Vatican City, Map Gallery