Das Haus des Tasso in Sorrent,

The painting shows the cliffs near Sorrento with a view of the house in which the poet Torquato Tasso was born. His sister, Cornelia, lived nearby in a house in which Tasso, suffering from mental illness, found refuge in 1577 after fleeing from Ferrara. The Romantics transfigured this episode from literary history into a parable of artistic endeavour in general and it is against this background that Morgenstern’s picture invites the viewer to ponder the poet’s tragic fate.