His hope is treacherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour:
But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of Paradise."
The ducal court at Ferrara became, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the centre of much intellectual life and brilliancy; generous patronage was extended to the arts and to literature, and here gathered together a company which rivalled in splendor the court of Urbino in the days of the Countess Elizabetta. The duke, Alfonso II., son of that unfortunate Renée, daughter of Louis XII. of France, who had been kept in an Italian prison for twelve long years because of her suspected sympathy with the reformed doctrines, came of a long line of princes who had in the past given liberally to the cause of learning. During his reign, which covers the period from 1559 to 1597, the social side of court life in his dukedom came into special prominence. The two sisters of Alfonso--Lucrezia and Leonora--presided over this court, and to it came, from time to time, many of the most beautiful women of Italy. Tarquinia Moeza was there, a woman of beauty and of rare poetic gifts; Lucrezia Bendidio, beautiful and accomplished, and having constantly about her a most admiring throng of poets and literati; and later came the two acknowledged beauties of the day, Leonora di Sanvitali, Countess of Scandiano, and her no less charming mother-in-law, Barbara, Countess of Sala. Among the men of this company, suffice it to mention the name of the poet Guarini, whose fame has become enduring on account of his charming and idyllic drama, Il pastor fido, for he it is who seems to embody that sprightliness of wit which gave to Ferrara at that time its gladsome reputation.
To this court there came, for the first time, in the year 1565, young Torquato Tasso, poet and courtier, scholar and gentleman, and already the author of a published narrative poem, the Rinaldo, which caused him to be hailed as the most promising poet of his generation when he was but in his eighteenth year. Bernardo Tasso, the poet's father, was likewise a poet and a professional courtier of some distinction, and varying fortunes had taken him to Urbino, where the son Torquato grew up, surrounded by all the evidences of refinement and culture. He had been favored by nature with a tall and commanding figure, and his good looks had already caused more than one gentle heart to flutter, when, at the age of twenty-one, with his father's consent and approval, he entered the service of the Cardinal Luigi d'Este, and became at once a conspicuous figure in court circles. Almost instantly the youth, filled as he was with most romantic ideas and readily susceptible to the power of woman's beauty, fell a captive to the charms of the Princess Leonora d'Este, who, though some ten years his senior, seemed to embody all the graces and to completely satisfy the ideal which up to this time he had been able to see only with his mind's eye. Leonora had already been sought in marriage by many titled suitors, but she had invariably turned a deaf ear to such proposals, never finding one who could please her fancy or who promised comfort in her loneliness. For she was lonely in that court, as she seems to have dwelt in a sort of spiritual isolation most of the time; there was always a melancholy air about her, which had no doubt been induced in large measure by her mother's sad fate. For Tasso to love her was most natural; but they both knew that such a love could be but hopeless, and it cannot be said that she encouraged him in any covert manner or that he made open profession of his passion. It is true that he makes her the subject of many of his poems, wherein he lauds her to the skies, but this is no more than was expected of a court poet; he did the same for other ladies, but in all that was dedicated to her charms there seems to shine forth a truer light of real affection than is found in all the others. What words of affection, if any, passed between them can never be known; but it seems that there must have been some sort of tacit consent to his silent adoration, and Tasso tells in a madrigal, perhaps in proof of this, that once, when he had asked her pardon for having put his arm upon her own in the eagerness of conversation, she replied, with gentleness: "You offended, not by putting your arm there, but by taking it away!"
For twelve years Tasso remained at Ferrara, constantly writing sonnets and short poems of all descriptions, which were most often addressed to Leonora, but at the same time he was busily working upon that longer poem in epic form, descriptive of the First Crusade, the Gerusalemme liberata, wherein he puts a new feeling into Italian poetry, which had been expressed before by Ariosto in his amatory verse, but which cannot be found to any great extent in his more pretentious work, the Orlando Furioso. This new feeling was real sentiment, and not sentimentality, and it denotes the growing conception of the worth and dignity of womanhood which we have already discovered in the poetry of Michael Angelo. Allowing for the infinite contradictions possible in human nature, it may be that these men of the same time, who so coolly killed their wives and sisters for acts of infidelity, were touched in some dim way with the same feeling, to which, alas! they gave but sorry expression, if the surmise be true.
The constant excitement of the court and his unending literary labors commenced to tell upon the poet in 1575, when his health began to fail and he grew irritable and restless, became subject to delusions, fancied that he had been denounced by the Inquisition, and was in daily terror of being poisoned. Then it was said that the poet was mad, and there are some who have whispered that it was his unrequited love for the Princess Leonora which brought about this calamity. However that may be, the climax was reached in the year 1577, when Tasso, in the presence of Lucrezia d'Este,--who was then Duchess of Urbino,--drew a knife upon one of his servants. For this he was arrested, but soon after was given his liberty on condition that he should go to a Franciscan monastery and give himself that rest and attention which his failing health demanded. Here, however, he was beset with the idea that the duke sought to take his life, and he fled in disguise to his sister, who was then living at Sorrento. Various explanations have been given for this sudden flight, and some biographers have insinuated that the duke had discovered some hidden intrigue between his sister Leonora and Tasso which had caused the latter to fear for his safety. This supposition cannot be accepted as true, however, for if the duke had known or had even strongly suspected such a thing he would have promptly put the poet to death without compunction, and such a course of action would have been entirely justified by the public sentiment of the time. And if this supposition were true, is it probable that Tasso would have been allowed to return to Ferrara in a short time, as he did? Now, begins a confused life, and the poet comes and goes, moved by a strange restlessness, never happy away from Ferrara, yet never caring to stay there long. Finally, on one occasion he thought himself so neglected at his return that he made a most violent scene, and became so bitter and incoherent in his complaints that he was pronounced insane and imprisoned by order of the duke. There he remained for seven years, and the most of that time he was in a well-lighted and well-furnished room, where he was allowed to receive visitors and devote himself to literary work whenever he so desired. At the end of this time, in which Tasso himself speaks of his mental disorder, he went to Mantua, where he had been invited by the Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga; there he spent a few pleasant months; but he soon grew discontented, the roaming fit came upon him again, and after a number of years of pitiful endeavor he finally died, in 1595, at the convent of Saint Onofrio.
It does not seem just to blame the Princess Leonora d'Este for the sad fate which befell Tasso, as so many have done, for there is no proof of any unkindness on her part. That he loved her there can be but little doubt, but hardly to the verge of madness, as he wrote love sonnets to other ladies at the same time; the truth seems to be that he became mentally unbalanced as the result of the precocious development of his powers, which made a man of him while yet a boy and developed in him an intensity of feeling which made his candle of life burn fiercely, but for a short time only. His end was but the natural consequence of the beginning, and whether Leonora helped or hindered in the final result, it matters not, for she was blameless. She died in the second year of Tasso's imprisonment, sad at heart as she had ever been, never deeply touched by the poet's constant praises, and to the end a victim to that melancholy mood which had come upon her in childhood.