Son of Guglielmo and Eleonora of Austria, Vincenzo was born in Mantua in 1562 and became Duke in 1587 at the age of twenty-five, upon the death of his father. A few months earlier, in July 1586, he had obtained Tasso’s release from Sant’Anna, subsequently providing hospitality to the poet at his court in Mantua, encouraging publication of the Floridante and especially the Torrismondo, which was dedicated to him. He was the prince to whom Tasso paid greatest homage in his final years. In 1562, the young Tasso, barely eighteen years old, had composed sonnets celebrating Vincenzo’s birth, and later composed work on his marriage to Eleonora de’ Medici in 1584 (with the canzone entitled Italia mia, che l’Apennin disgiunge, picking up the famous Petrarchan model), his passing ailments, and the birth of heirs. Tasso also Tasso wrote the ambitious Amore alma è del mondo, Amore è mente (Rime, 444) for Vincenzo. Even though the relationship with Vincenzo soon ended, with Tasso deciding twice, in 1587 and again in 1591, to leave the rich and luxurious Gonzaga Court (where Rubens arrived a few years later), Vincenzo’s importance and Tasso’s gratitude are conveyed unmistakeably in the sonnet composed immediately after Tasso’s release from Sant’Anna: “Vostro dono è s’io spiro e dolce raggio / di sol chiaro e lucente a me risplende, se l’ale il nome ancor dispiega e stende, / se scampo rischio e non pavento oltraggio” [“versione in inglese” (Rime, 313, 1-4)].

P.P. Rubens, Portrait of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Mantua, Palazzo ducale