Born in 1533 to Ercole II and Renée of France, Alfonso became Duke of Ferrara in 1559 upon his father’s death. The previous year he had married Lucrezia de’ Medici, who died in 1561. He remarried twice, first to Barbara of Austria in 1565 and in 1579 to Margherita Gonzaga, but was unsuccessful in providing an heir to the Este dynasty. Succession difficulties (leading eventually to the 1597 devolution), rumours of Alfonso’s sterility and the drawn-out and libellous “precedence” controversy between Ferrara and Florence, between the Este and the Medici, brought tension to the otherwise elegant and refined court that Tasso entered towards the end of 1565. Having passed to the direct service of the Duke in 1572, Tasso dedicated the encomiastic section of his epic to him, and the invocation at the beginning of canto I:
Tu magnanimo Alfonso, il qual ritogli
al furor di fortuna e guidi in porto
me peregrino errante e fra gli scogli
e fra l’onde agitato e quasi absorto,
queste mie carte in lieta fronte accogli... (Liberata I, 4, 1-5).
In addition, deriving from a daily practice of eulogistic writing, he produced a series of sonnets celebrating Alfonso’s magnificence and marriage (see, for example, Rime, 577-581), before the distrust of 1577-1579 and his confinement at Sant’Anna marked a change in their relationship, which had a profound impact on Tasso’s life and thinking. The numerous letters that Tasso addressed to the Duke during his seven years of confinement, and more generally his attempts to obtain his release through the intervention of friends and protectors, point to the disillusionment and bitterness that characterized Tasso’s final years, so different from his earlier and tranquil time at the Ferrara court.
Alfonso II d’Este
