Tassoni was a scholar, poet and private secretary to eminent figures, including Cardinal Antonio Colonna, Vittorio Emanuele I of Savoy and Francesco I d’Este. He owes his fame mainly to the mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Bucket, published in 1622, which helped to turn the common wooden bucket, jealously guarded for centuries in the Torre della Ghirlandina, into one of the symbols of the city.
A marble monument by Alessandro Cavazza was placed at the foot of the tower in his honour in 1860.