AbstractThere is deliberate ambiguity in the title of this article, for there are at least three separate ways in which Tasso can be considered in relation to the Visual arts. I shall begin by an examination of what Tasso has to say himself about the art of his own day—few and scattered, but not random, remarks, which help to build up a picture of the artistic milieu in which he was brought up: and continue with some account of certain examples of the visual arts which are contemporary with Tasso's life at Ferrara and Rome. These have no recorded connection with Tasso himself but they enable us to investigate those springs of affinity between the arts which go to make up the spirit of the age—a spirit which perhaps may be summed up as a search for a harmony between the Muses of Parnassus and the Counter-Reformation. Lastly I do no more than glance at the vast subject of Tasso's poetry as a source of inspiration to painters of his own and later generations.