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A Renaissance Masterpiece: Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata
From: The British Library
| By:
Chris Michaelides |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso is best known for having composed the Gerusalemme liberata, whose dominant theme and minor motifs inspired painters and composers for centuries afterwards. Below, Chris Michaelides recreates a recent exhibit he curated for The British Library of five illustrated editions of the Gerusalemme liberata. |
  orquato Tasso is the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance. Gerusalemme liberata, his masterpiece, is, with Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, the most popular and influential epic of the sixteenth century. Its main subject is the siege and final capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders under Godfrey of Boulogne, symbolic of the triumph of the Church militant over its enemies. Some of its finest poetry is contained in the amorous and idyllic episodes subordinate to the main theme and these were the episodes that captured the imagination of artists and composers over the following three centuries. In the visual arts they inspired artists from Guercino to Delacroix while in music Tasso's poetry was the source of innumerable compositions, notably madrigals by Giaches de Wert, Monteverdi and Sigismondo d'India, and operas by Lully, Gluck, Haydn, Jommelli, Rossini and Dvorak. |
During the Romantic era Tasso became the prototype of the misunderstood genius at odds with the society of his time, and the legend of his love for Leonora d'Este and consequent incarceration as a madman became the subject of plays, poems, paintings, novels, operas and symphonic poems. |
Five illustrated editions of the <i>Gerusalemme liberata</i>
The composition of the epic poem preoccupied Tasso for the whole of his creative life. An early fragment of 116 stanzas (known as Il Gierusalemme) dates from the poet's stay in Venice in 1559-1560. After a five-year interruption, during which Tasso wrote Rinaldo (1562), the poet resumed its composition when he moved to Ferrara. The first draft was complete by 1575 and Tasso, anxious to win the approval of men of letters, began to submit separate cantos of the poem to his friend Scipione Gonzaga and to others for revision and comment. Their well-meaning but devastating comments and criticism about the content and form of the poem, contributed to undermine Tasso's physical and mental health and prevented him from further revising the text. The work came out while Tasso was incarcerated in the hospital of Sant' Anna, its publication sparking a fierce literary dispute between supporters of Ariosto and of Tasso, the former criticising the poem for its lack of invention and the impurity of its language. These criticisms, coupled with Tasso' s religious scruples, decided him to revise the work drastically, removing some of its most famous episodes (for example, both Erminia's stay with the shepherds and her discovery of the wounded Tancredi) adding new episodes and changing the names of many characters. The new work, Gerusalemme conquistata (1593), is more didactic and lays greater emphasis on historical accuracy. It is generally considered to be inferior to the original work. |
<i>La Gerusalemme liberata figurata da B. Castello</i>. Genova: Pavoni, 1617. fol.
 Bernardo Castello was one of the most admired and imitated illustrators of Tasso's work. Of a Genoese dynasty of artists (he was the father of Valerio Castello) and a man of letters himself, his work was praised by other writers, notably the poet Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625) who, in his sonnet Movon qui duo gran Fabri Arte contr'Arte, lauded the skill of the artist as the equal to the poet's. The sonnet was later included in La Galeria (1620), Marino's collection of poems each describing a real or imaginary work of art. Tasso also wrote a sonnet in praise of Castello. |
Castello illustrated three editions of Gerusalemme liberata, in 1590, 1604 and 1617 (an edition published in 1615 is only a reprint of the 1604 one with a new title-page and dedication). All three editions were the initiative of the artist who also financed their publication. |
Castello has a preference for illustrations that are martial, religious and didactic in character in contrast to eighteenth century illustrators (e.g. Piazzetta) who highlighted the pastoral and amorous elements of the poem. His illustrations are extremely faithful to the poem and also to the argomento at the beginning of each canto. |
The third set of Castello's illustrations was engraved by Camillo Cungio. It is altogether more ornate than the 1590 edition, its engravings set within elaborate borders with grotesques, putti, floral and fruit motifs and scrolls. Equally ornate borders surround the argomenti. |
This copy has etchings by Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630) inserted at the beginning of each canto. Tempesta was an extremely prolific printmaker (he produced over 1,000 prints) who had previously borrowed heavily, for an edition published in Rome in 1607, from the second set of Castello's illustrations of the poem. The present set was published without the text of the poem sometime between 1617 and 1625. This time Tempesta relies heavily on Castello's plates for the 1617 edition, particularly in his compositions for cantos 2-4, 10-12 and 17. In Canto 15, however, he chooses an earlier scene from the one depicted by Castello, with the magician of Ascalon giving the departing Carlo and Ubaldo the shield that will reveal to Rinaldo the extent of his degradation, while Fortuna, who will carry in her boat the two knights to Armida's island waits in the background. Armida's island, with a host of wild animals and monsters attempting to prevent their advance, can be seen in the distance. In Castello's plate, Carlo and Ubaldo have arrived on Armida's island, the departing Fortuna looking back as they face the temptations along the way. |
<i>La Gerusalemme liberata di Torquato Tasso con la vita di lui e con gli argomenti dell'opera del cav. Guido Casoni</i>. In Venetia: dal Sarzina, 1625. 4°.
 This edition includes a life of Tasso by Guido Casoni together with an ode on the death of the poet. What distinguishes it though are the 20 full-page plates after Giacomo and Francesco Valegio (born 1560) and Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638). Following the example of Bernardo Castello, each plate is crowded with incident anticipating a number of events in the relevant canto. |
The opening shows the beginning of Canto 7 with Erminia and the Shepherd. Erminia, the daughter of the deceased king of Antioch, has fled from Jerusalem dressed in warrior clothes in search of Tancredi in the Christian camp. She is apprehended and, after an arduous chase she comes upon a shepherd weaving baskets and his three children. She takes refuge with them. She is also seen in the middle ground in pastoral occupations while Tancredi, who has lost himself in his pursuit of Erminia, is led to Armida's castle. In the background can be seen the combat between the ferocious Argante and the elderly Raimondo. |
<i>Gottfried von Bulljon, Oder Das Erlvsete Jerusalem</i>. Frankfurt: In Verlegung Damiels vnd Davids Aubrij vnd Clemens Schleichen, 1626. 40.
 This was the first German illustrated edition of the poem, translated by Dietrich von dem Werder (1584-1657) in 1624. It has 24 plates by Matthaeus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), the foremost German engraver of his time. Merian was born in Basle but spent most of his working life in Frankfurt where, in 1623, he inherited the flourishing publishing firm of Johann Theodor de Bry, his father-in-law. He was a prolific engraver and book illustrator, best known for his topographical views and Bible illustrations. |
Merian's illustrations for Tasso are among his most distinguished works. The artist's topographical interests can be seen in several plates which show panoramic views of the opposing forces but the quasi-Apocalyptic scene shown here, for Canto 13, is close to Altdorfer's forest depictions. Ismeno, a Saracen sorcerer, has filled the forest with evil spirits in order to prevent the Christians from finding timber to build new military engines for the storming of Jerusalem. At the approach of the Christians the spirits assume different guises. Tancredi, who is seen entering the forest and, in the middle ground, trying to cut a tree, is prevented by a spirit in the shape of his beloved Clorinda whom he has slain. The drought afflicting the Christian troops is represented by the sun at the top left. |
<b><i>La Gierusalemme liberata</i></b>. In Venezia: Giambattista Albrizzi, 1745. fol.
 This monumental edition of Gerusalemme liberata, one of the most magnificent books of the eighteenth century, was published, in two volumes, in 1745 and was the fruit of the collaboration between Giambattista Albrizzi (1698-1777) and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754). Albrizzi, of a family of publisher-printer-booksellers active in Venice for some 150 years, was the publisher of several illustrated books and had previously collaborated with Piazzetta on the publication of Bossuet's complete works which started in 1736. The publication of Gerusalemme liberata was in preparation for several years as Albrizzi had shown Piazzetta's drawings to Johann Caspar Goethe, the poet's father, during his journey in Italy in 1740. Piazzeta was then at the height of his reputation as a designer of book illustrations. |
Piazzetta executed all the drawings for the book. There are twenty full-page engravings, one at the beginning of each Canto, full-page portraits of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Hungary (the dedicatee of the edition), Albrizzi and Piazzetta, decorative borders surrounding each argomento, tailpieces and historiated initials. The drawings concentrate on individual scenes and they are not always subordinate to the text. They avoid the battle scenes favoured by earlier illustrators of the poem concentrating instead on a few figures, often in Arcadian surroundings. Plates are signed by Felice Polanzani (the portrait of Maria Theresa) and Carlo Orsolini (Canto 7). The 20 plates and the vignettes at the end of each canto were also published without the text. |
The plate, from the beginning of Canto 7, shows Erminia and the Shepherd. |
<i>Il Goffredo, ovvero Gerusalemme liberata di Torquato Tasso. Nuova edizione arricchiti di figure in rame, ed'annotazioni colla vita dell'autore</i>. In Venezia: presso Antonio Groppo, 1760-1761. 40.
 This sumptuous edition has engravings by Giacomo de Leonardis (1723-ca.1782)
after the work of Bernardo Castello in the 1617 edition of the poem. There are also 96 vignettes in the text and at the end of each canto engraved by de Leonardis after Pietro Antonio Novelli (1729-1804). There is also a portrait of Tasso after Agostino Carracci, as well as an allegorical frontispiece. Both Novelli and de Leonardis were influenced by Giambattista Tiepolo and this can be seen in the elegant and graceful vignettes which offer an interesting contrast to the work of Castello. |
This feature is based on an exhibit organised at The British Library by Chris Michaelides to commemorate the quatercentenary of the poet's death and showed the wide-ranging influence of his work in the visual arts and music for the next three centuries, and also the legend of Tasso during the Romantic era. |
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