Torquato Tasso, already famous at the age…
1562 CE
Torquato Tasso, already famous at the age of eight for the intellect and the religious fervor he had displayed under Jesuit tutelage in Naples, had soon afterwards joined his father Bernardo, who then resided in great poverty, an exile and without occupation, in Rome.
Bernardo, a poet by predilection and a professional courtier, had in 1557 gladly accepted the offer of an opening at the court of Urbino.
His son, a handsome and brilliant lad, became the companion in sports and studies of Francesco Maria della Rovere, heir to the duke of Urbino, where a society of cultivated men pursued the aesthetical and literary studies now in vogue.
Bernardo Tasso read cantos of his Amadigi to the duchess and her ladies, or discussed the merits of Homer and Virgil, Trissino and Ariosto, with the duke's librarians and secretaries.
Torquato has thus grown up in an atmosphere of refined luxury and somewhat pedantic criticism.
Sent by his father sent to study law in Padua, the young man bestows all his attention upon philosophy and poetry instead of applying himself to law.
He displays early evidence of his genius in his poetic poem Rinaldo, written before the end of 1562 when he is only eighteen years old.