Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem Gerusalemme liberata, in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem of 1099.
Portrait of Torquato Tasso, aged 22, by Jacopo Bassano
Portrait of Torquato Tasso, 1590s
Castello degli Estensi, Ferrara
Alfonso II d'Este, portrait by Girolamo da Carpi
Jerusalem Delivered, also known as The Liberation of Jerusalem, is an epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581, that tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem. Tasso began work on the poem in the mid-1560s. Originally, it bore the title Il Goffredo. It was completed in April 1575 and that summer the poet read his work to Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and Lucrezia, Duchess of Urbino. A pirate edition of 14 cantos from the poem appeared in Venice in 1580. The first complete editions of Gerusalemme liberata were published in Parma and Ferrara in 1581.
Armida Discovers the Sleeping Rinaldo by Nicolas Poussin (1629). Cupid restrains her from stabbing her enemy.
Rinaldo and Armida in her garden, by François Boucher
Clorinda attacks Tancredi, one of a series by Paolo Domenico Finoglia
Erminia discovers the wounded Tancred, by Guercino (1619).