Italian poet TORQUATO TASSO was born on this date (d. 1595). Best known for his poem La Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”) (1580), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem.

Believed by some, now, to have suffered from some form of schizophrenia, he died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the "king of poets" by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 19th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.

His poems barely hint at his sexuality but his letters written to one Luca Scalabrino are very plain about his love of men. Here's a taste from the translated letters by Jill Claretta Robbins in the [spectacularly good] Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature:

"You Lordship, in your last letter you ask forgiveness of me for not having revealed your sexual desire for me; and in your other ones that you wrote to me before, you have always shown that you believe that I am scornful of you, because you have not revealed to me this carnal desire of yours, and you express a very good reason for your secrecy and silence used with me....speak no longer of these things....In sum, I am all yours."

The German proto-Neoclassical painter ANTON RAPHAEL MENGS was  born on this date (d. 1779). Lover of JOHANN JOACHIM WINKELMANN. Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome.

In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Guazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid.

There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agustín Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and self-portraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings.

Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand.

In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the color of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning.

His intimacy with Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism.

Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. He was also a friend of Giacomo Casanova. Casanova provides accounts of his personality and contemporary reputation through anecdotes in Histoire de Ma Vie. He died in Rome in June 1779 and was buried in the Roman Church of Santi Michele e Magno.

HENRY COWELL, American musician and composer, born (d: 1965); an American composer, musical theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:

“Henry Cowell's music covers a wider range in both expression and technique than that of any other living composer. His experiments begun three decades ago in rhythm, in harmony, and in instrumental sonorities were considered then by many to be wild. Today they are the Bible of the young and still, to the conservatives, "advanced."... No other composer of our time has produced a body of works so radical and so normal, so penetrating and so comprehensive. Add to this massive production his long and influential career as a pedagogue, and Henry Cowell's achievement becomes impressive indeed. There is no other quite like it. To be both fecund and right is given to few.”

A great admirer of Charles Ives long before that composer enjoyed any public recognition, Cowell’s experimented with new musical resources: In his piano compositions he introduced the tone cluster, played with the arm or the fist, and wrote pieces to be played directly on the piano strings. In the mid-1930s, Cowell’s career was interrupted by his imprisonment on “morals” charges, during which time, to his eternal shame, Charles Ives completely turned his back on the man who was to prove his sympathetic biographer.

Today is the birthday of Scottish singer, actor, and activist JOHN BARROWMAN.  Best known for his role as “Captain Jack Harkness” in the science fiction series Doctor Who and Torchwood. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Barrowman and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was nine.

Growing up in Illinois, his high school teachers encouraged his love for music and theatre and he studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before visiting the United Kingdom and landing the role of "Billy Crocker" in Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London's West End.

In addition to appearing in several films and television series, Barrowman has featured on more than a dozen musical theatre recordings including cover tunes found on the certified gold album Another Side (2007), Music Music Music (2008), the second Top 40 album by Barrowman to reach the UK albums and singles charts, and his self-titled release John Barrowman (2010), the highest chart rating of any of Barrowman's albums to date.

Barrowman met his partner Scott Gill in 1993 and in 2005 they registered as civil partners under British law.  They do not call their relationship a marriage: "We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going to have any ceremony because I'm not a supporter of the word marriage for a Gay partnership."  Barrowman explained later: "Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?"  A small ceremony was held in Cardiff with friends and family, with the cast of Torchwood and executive producer Russell T. Davies as guests.

In 2009, Barrowman published I Am What I Am, his second memoir detailing his recent television work and musings on fame. In the book, Barrowman reveals that when he was just beginning his acting career, a Gay producer told Barrowman that he should try to pretend to be heterosexual in order to be successful. Barrowman was offended by the incident, and it made him more aware of the importance of his role as a Gay public figure:

"One of my explicit missions as an entertainer is to work to create a world where no one will ever make a statement like this producer did to me to anyone who's Gay." To this end, Barrowman is active in his community supporting the issues that matter to him most. He worked with Stonewall, a Gay rights organization in the UK, on the "Education for All" campaign against homophobia  in the schools. In April 2008, the group placed posters on 600 billboards that read, "Some people are Gay. Get over it!" Barrowman contributed his support to the project asking people to join him and "Help exterminate homophobia. Be bold. Be brave. Be a buddy, not a bully." In the same month, Barrowman spoke at the Oxford Union about his career, the entertainment industry, and Gay Rights issues. The event was filmed for the BBC program The Making Of Me, in an episode exploring the science of homosexuality In 1998, Barrowman was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and in 2006 he was voted Stonewall's "Entertainer of the Year."

CHRISTOPHER RICE, An American author, Rice has written three best-selling novels: A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden, and Light Before Day. His book, Blind Fall, was published in 2008 by Charles Scribner's Sons. His parents are Anne Rice and the late poet Stan Rice; his aunt, Alice Borchardt, is a noted writer. Rice is gay; when asked in 2002 about "being pegged a 'Gay writer'", he replied:

“That's not what I do. I might be more open to that label if I hadn't introduced ensemble casts of characters. Granted, A Density of Souls is as close to a gay book as you can get. It revolves around a character's homosexuality and others are described in terms of their reaction to the one character's sexuality. In that sense it's at the core of the book. The Snow Garden is about identity. With this book, I'm trying to shrug off the term "Gay" author.”

Nonetheless, Rice is proud of his large following in the Gay community, explaining "it was incredibly rewarding when I got a huge positive response from the character Stephen in The Density of Souls. More than a thousand young Gay men contacted me and said that I captured what it was like for them going through those years. That means everything to me."

Rice also writes a regular feature for The Advocate "Coastal Disturbances," in which he discusses various topics and served as the President of the Board of the Lambda Literary Foundation.