Tasso, BERNARDO, now chiefly remembered as the father of the great Torquato, was, however, held in high esteem as a poet in his own day. Born at Venice in 1493, he belonged to an illustrious family of Bergamo, who had held the administration of the posts in Italy and other countries, and hence show in their armorial bearings a post-horn and the skin of a badger (tasso), of which fur the post-horses' frontlets were made. Bernardo, left an orphan, studied at Padua, where he gained the friendship of the famous Cardinal Bembo, the then oracle of literary taste, and, becoming secretary of Guido Rangone, was sent to France (1528). Here he entered the service of Renée, daughter of Louis XII. of France, wife of Ercole II. d'Este, reigning Duke of Ferrara, and mother of the Alfonso and Leonora d'Este whose influence was to be so great on the future destiny of Bernardo's famous son. A few years later we find him in the service of Sanseverino, prince of Salerno, whom he followed in many travels, joining with him the expedition of the emperor, Charles V., against the Tunisian pirates in 1535, and visiting Spain, Flanders, and France a second time.
Bernardo's literary productions had been chiefly lyrical, of the bombastic and hyperbolic type affected by the imitators of Petrarch; he had followed the movement made at this time to adapt Italian verse to Latin metrical forms. Sanseverino settled on him a pension and allowed him to retire to Sorrento, there to dedicate himself to the composition of an epic poem, the subject of which was the Amadis of Gaul and his adventures, as described in the admired Spanish romance by Ordenez de Montalvo (published about 1492). Bernardo married, probably in 1536, Porzia de' Rossi, belonging to a noble family from Pistoja in Tuscany. In 1537 a daughter, Cornelia, was born to them, and in 1544 their only son, Torquato, the future great poet. Bernardo and his wife lived in perfect peace and unity, until in 1547 their prosperity came to a sudden end. Their protector Sanseverino resisted the attempt of the imperial viceroy to establish the Inquisition in Naples, fell into disfavour with the emperor, Charles V., and, joining the French king, was outlawed and had his estates confiscated. Poor Bernardo, who had followed his patron, was included in the same sentence. His wife and children took refuge in Naples with relatives; his little son was sent to him in Rome in 1554. For some years Bernardo led a wretched life there, still more embittered by the loss of his beloved wife, who died in sorrow and poverty in Naples, 1556. He found a refuge later at the court of Urbino, where he finished his epic, L'Amadigi. Bernardo went to Venice to superintend the publication of his great work (4to, 1560), but it did not bring him the fame he had hoped. The last years of Bernardo's life were passed in the service of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua, who made him podesta of Ostiglia. Here, on the 4th September 1569, he ended his long and troubled career, breathing his last in the arms of his beloved son. Bernardo's chief work, L'Amadigi, is now entirely forgotten; it is one of the many imitations of Ariosto's romantic epic, but exaggerated and inflated in style and unreal in sentiment; the verse, however, is skilful and melodious. He began another epic, Floridante, finished by his son, and published (1587, 4to). Besides his numerous lyrics (2 vols. 1749) he has left a copious and interesting correspondence (1733-51).
See the more recent Lettere di Bernardo Tasso, edited with biography by G. Campori (Bologna, 1869), and, for details of his later years, Lettere inedite (published by Portioli, Mantua, 1871).