Tasso Dies in Rome

1595

The tormented Italian poet Torquato Tasso, author of the crusading epic Gerusalemme Liberata, died in a Roman monastery just before he was to receive the poet's laurel on the Capitoline Hill. His melancholy and his genius would haunt Italian poetry and, later, European Romanticism. His epic Gerusalemme Liberata became one of the most translated works of Italian literature and a touchstone for European Romanticism.