[CHIVALRIC POEM].
TASSO Torquato (1544-1595)
La Gerusalemme liberata
Genoa: Giuseppe Pavoni for Bernardo Castello; 1617
Fully illustrated with splendid full page engravings by Agostino Carracci and Giacomo Franco after Bernardo Castello
(total 19 (of 20) plates plus engraved title)
Small folio: 8 by 11 1/3"
Engraved title-page:
With portrait of Torquato Tasso, bust, facing front, wearing a laurel crown; within an oval pendant, lettered “TOROVATO […] TASSO EF”, suspended from a pediment, beneath which a view of Genoa is flanked by two columns, and above is a tablet, lettered: “LA GERUSALEMME | LIBERATA | DI TORQUATO | TASSO. | Con le annotazioni | di Scipion | Gentili, e di Givlio | Guastauini , | Et li argomenti di Oratio Ariosti , | STAMPATA | Per Giuseppe Pauoni ad instanza di | Bernardo Castello,in Genova | L’Anno MDCXVII.”
Engraved plates at the start of each canto, vignettes and headpieces (missing +2 and +4 v* with engraved dedication to Savoy and a leaf of sonnets to Tasso)
old repairs to the title-page and to the margin of the penultimate leaf, some occasional marginal spots).
Early twentieth-century half-calf with embossed damask sides, title gilt, marbled endpapers
Text in Italian

Jerusalem Delivered, also known as The Liberation of Jerusalem (Italian: La Gerusalemme liberata - lit.?'The freed Jerusalem'), is an epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581, that tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem.
Tasso's choice of subject matter, an actual historic conflict between Christians and Muslims (albeit with fantastical elements added), had a historical grounding and created compositional implications (the narrative subject matter had a fixed endpoint and could not be endlessly spun out in multiple volumes) that are lacking in other Renaissance epics. Like other works of the period that portray conflicts between Christians and Muslims, this subject matter had a topical resonance to readers of the period when the Ottoman Empire was advancing through Eastern Europe.
The poem was hugely successful, and sections or moments from the story were used in works in other media all over Europe, especially in the period before the French Revolution and the Romantic movement, which provided alternative stories combining love, violence, and an exotic setting.
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