3-080-681 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Tasso in Disguise Relating his Persecutions to his Sister, c1840. The romantic and tragic tale of the famous Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), had been popularised by Goëthe in a play of 1790 and more recently by Lord Byron in his poem of 1817, The Lament of Tasso. In The Lament of Tasso Byron documents the poet's struggle with mental illness (now thought to have been schizophrenia) which included manic interludes, during which he had to be hospitalised for his own safety. Here Tasso is seen relating his mental persecutions to his sister Leonora.