UNKNOWN MASTER, Italian
(active 1590s in Florence)

Portrait of Torquato Tasso

1590s
Oil on wood, 103 x 81 cm
Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580), 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.