Torquato Tasso (1544-1594)  
Tasso was born in Sorrento in 1544. He attended a Jesuit school in Naples, and was also educated at home by his father, Bernardo Tasso, himself a distinguished man of letters, a poet-courtier, who had been exiled from Naples. Tasso continued his education in various Italian cities, notably in Urbino. His first major work, the narrative poem Rinaldo, appeared when he was 18 years old. From 1560 to 1565 he studied law and philosophy at the universities of Padua and Bologna, and then went to Ferrara, where he entered the service of Este family as poet-in-residence.
During this time he wrote the pastoral drama Aminta (1573), and La Gerusalemme liberata, composed between the years 1559 and 1575. This is an heroic poem which depicts in 20 songs the First Crusade, in 1099. Tasso used imaginary characters with real historical persons. After finishing his masterwork, Tasso started to suffer from mental problems - his sensitive nature was racked by doubts about the critical and religious orthodoxy of his work and by suspicions of hostility toward him on the part of patrons and friends. He was declared insane and spent from 1579 seven years in the hospital of Santa Anna by order of duke of Ferrara. During this time Tasso wrote a number of philosophical and moral dialogues. Tasso never totally regained his sanity. He was released in 1586 on condition that he would leave Ferrara. At the same time he found himself honored for his Jerusalem, which had gained a huge popularity.
Despite his further wanderings in Italy from court to court, the unhappy, paranoid, and poverty-stricken Tasso completed in 1586 a tragedy, Torrismondo and a poem about creation, Il mondo creato (1609). He completed and revised version of his masterpiece, called Jerusalem Conquered, to meet critical and ecclesiastical objections.
In 1594 Tasso was invited to Rome by Pope Clement VIII to be crowned Italy's Poet Laureate. However, Tasso became seriously ill and died in Rome on April 25, 1595 before he could accept the honor.
Among Tasso's other works are some 2 000 short poems, including sonnets and madrigals.

links:  - Jerusalem Delivered