The controversy as to the superiority of Orlando furioso or Gerusalemme liberata was begun by a Neapolitan literary figure, Camillo Pellegrino. In Carrafa overo de l’epica poesia (published in 1584), Pellegrino maintained that Tasso’s epic was preferable as a proper epic, in implicit comparison with the great epic writers of classical times, Homer and Virgil. The reply from Florence arrived a few weeks later, with a strongly-worded text (Degli Accademici della Crusca Difesa dell'Orlando Furioso dell'Ariosto [...] Stacciata prima) written by Leonardo Salviati, which reiterated the superiority of the Furioso and levelled a number of criticisms at Tasso’s epic. Meanwhile, in January, Francesco Patrizi had also defended Ariosto’s epic, and shortly afterwards he was joined by Ariosto’s great-grandnephew Orazio, a close friend of Tasso in earlier years. Suddenly submerged in acrimonious debate, Tasso found himself defending an epic whose publication he had not approved and that in those very months, while confined at Sant’Anna, he was planning to revise. In March 1585, he wrote a long reply to the Crusca, the Apologia del s. Torquato Tasso. In difesa della sua Gierusalemme liberata, which was printed in the following months at Ferrara. He chose the dialogue format, replying point by point to the criticisms received, trying to use to his own advantage a series of authoritative classical examples. The controversy raged on, with further comments by Salviati and Bastiano de’ Rossi, and a series of minor men of letters who took part by siding either with the Furioso or the Liberata. After replying to Patrizi and clarifying doubts in private letters, Tasso withdrew from the debate. He later applied his ideas to the reworking of his epic, which became the Gerusalemme conquistata (Jerusalem Vanquished).

Nicolas Poussin, Tancred and Erminia, St Petersburg, Hermitage