Tasso na Prisão

Resende, pupil of August Roquemont, presents Tasso in prison, who is the poet of “La Gerusalemme Liberata” of 1580. The canvas is painted in oil with predominance of brown colours and shades, detailing the image of a sitting bearded man, whole figured, with his left arm on a table, in a rather limited room with claustrophobic walls and bars (the representation of imprisonment), from where a streak of light comes in, and only a paper and pencil-box on the table. The scene was immortalized by Baudelaire in his poem “On Tasso in Prison” by Eugéne Delacroix. Francisco José de Resende, popular and conservative painter, faithful to romanticist painting wrote on the back of this painting: “I offered the original painting (natural scale) to Our King Dom Fernando, my generous benefactor”. He is a mandatory personality of the Romanticist Oporto and the Portuguese Romanticist painting.