Torquato Tasso

Born

1544-03-11

Died

1595-04-26

Birthplace

Sorrento, Kingdom of Naples [now Campania, Italy]

Biography

Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), 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. Tasso had mental illness and died a few days before he was to be crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by Pope Clement VIII. His work was widely translated and adapted, and until the beginning of the 20th century, he remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe