The fifteen stanzas by Messer Bernardo Tasso, announced in the frontispiece of Giovan Tomaso Lambertini’s first book of madrigals, are none other than Tasso’s "Stanze della Lontananza". They were composed in 1544, during the poet’s period of residence in northern Europe, where he was in the service of his patron, Signore Ferrante Sanseverino, prince of Salerno, reporting on developments in the battle between Charles V and Francis I. Just a few months earlier, while he was already abroad, Tasso’s last child, Torquato, was born. Lambertini, on the other hand, adorned all fifteen of them with music. The book of madrigals, which at the end includes six poetic works by the composer himself, was published in Venice in 1560,