The Genealogia di casa Gonzaga, with its 119 octave stanzas, is a good example of Tasso’s later encomiastic work, written during his second period at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, who provided him with hospitality for several months in 1591. After dedicating the Liberata to the Este dynasty, and after recalling the “Serenissima casa dei Medici” in an oration, Tasso set down in solemn celebratory verse the glories of the Gonzaga family. His invocation at the start is the lofty Sante Muse Immortali e Sacre menti (see edition by M. Pieri, Parma, Zara, 1988). The close link with the historical material used by Tasso (Cesare Campana’s account of the glories of Mantua) indicates that the work was produced in the exercise of duty, to which Tasso applied his substantial poetic experience. It is indicative that he did not publish the work, which was printed half-way through the seventeenth century by Marcantonio Foppa.

Andrea Mantegna, The Gonzaga Family and Retinue, Mantua, Palazzo ducale