Poet Bernardo Tasso left his mark on Sorrento

 

Bernardo Tasso, a prolific poet, who also served as a courtier to various Italian noblemen,  spent some years living in Sorrento while he was in the service of the Prince of Salerno.

He later became famous for being the father of Torquato Tasso, who went on to become one of Italy’s greatest Renaissance poets.

It was while Bernardo was living in a house in the historic centre of Sorrento that his wife, Porzia de Rossi, gave birth to Torquato in 1544. The event is commemorated with a plaque on the building that is now part of the Imperial Hotel Tramontano.

The plaque features an excerpt from an ode written by Bernardo Tasso in 1543, the year before Torquato was born.

While Torquato was still a child, the Prince of Salerno fell out of favour with the Spanish government of Naples and was outlawed. His employee, Bernardo, had to share in his  punishment and he and his son, Torquato, were declared rebels of the state and both had to leave Sorrento.

However, Bernardo’s daughter, Cornelia, remained in Sorrento and grew up to marry a Sorrento man, Mario Sersale, in 1558. The house where they lived is tucked away in a narrow street in the historic heart of Sorrento, situated between the main street and the sea. The building at number 11 Vico San Nicolo is known as the Sersale house and can be identified by a pretty little balcony on the front, which is supported by decorative stonework.

To find the house, leave Piazza Sant’Antonino and walk along Via Santa Maria delle Grazie, which runs parallel with Corso Italia. Continue in a straight line along Via dell’Accademia until it becomes Vico San Nicola. The house of Cornelia Tasso can be found on the right-hand side.

Bernardo later went into the service of Duke Guidobaldo II at his court in Urbino and Torquato went with him and was educated there. While his father was resident poet at the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Torquato studied alongside Francesco Maria della Rovere, the heir to the duke.

It was in Urbino that Bernardo started writing his major work, L’Amadiji, an epic poem, of 100 cantos, which was later completed by his son, Torquato.

Bernardo went on to serve the Duke of Mantua, Guglielmo Gonzaga, who appointed him Governor of Ostiglia, in the province of Mantua in Lombardy. This is where he died in 1569.

During his life, Bernardo Tasso wrote many psalms, sonnets and odes in the manner of Horace. He published his lyric poems, Amori , in Venice in 1555. His main work, L’Amadiji, was inspired by the Spanish chivalric romance, Amadis de Gaula. Torquato later completed L’Amadiji and published the full work under the title of Floridante in 1587.

Torquato Tasso’s most famous work was the epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) in which he gives an imaginative version of the battles between Christians and Muslims at the end of the first crusade during the siege of Jerusalem.

He spent many years living in Ferrara at the Castle owned by the Este family, where he fell in love with a lady in waiting and wrote love sonnets to her. But because of the jealous behaviour of other courtiers, he developed persecution mania and suspected he was going to be poisoned.

Eventually, he escaped from Ferrara and made his way to Sorrento to visit his only sister, Cornelia, who had continued to live in the Sersale house with her sons, Antonino and Alessandro, after she became a widow.

Tasso feared he was going to be denounced by the Inquisition and although he had entered a Franciscan convent for the benefit of his health, he escaped from it, disguised himself as a peasant, and travelled to Sorrento.

It is said Torquato arrived at Cornelia’s house in Via San Nicola and pretended to be a messenger who had come to inform her of her brother’s death.

Tasso is believed to have been trying to test Cornelia’s loyalty to him, but her shock and distress on receiving the news was enough to reassure him that she could be trusted.

Despite enjoying some happy months in Sorrento with his beloved sister, Tasso found that he missed the court at Ferrara and he wrote to the duke, asking if he could return there.

But after more difficult years, during which Tasso was confined to a madhouse by his patron,  he left Ferrara and wandered from city to city throughout Italy without settling.

Then, he was invited to go and live in Rome by the Pope, where he died in 1595, when he was just about to be crowned Poet Laureate by Pope Clement VIII.

Although Bernardo and Torquato Tasso travelled all over Italy during their lives, Sorrento’s main square has been named after them. Piazza Tasso is right at the hub of Sorrento, in the middle of the main shopping street, Corso Italia, and looks out over Marina Piccola, Sorrento’s port. There is a statue of Torquato Tasso in a little garden near the area where horses stand waiting to pull carriages for sightseeing tours.

The house where Bernardo was living when Torquato Tasso was born is in Via Vittorio Veneto, a few streets away from Piazza Tasso. It is one of the buildings that form the Imperial Hotel Tramontano, where the beautiful song, Torna a Surriento, was composed by Ernesto De Curtis while he was sitting on the hotel terrace in 1902 and was inspired by the beauty of Sorrento.