Ansaldo Cebà

Ansaldo Cebà (1565 – April 1623) was an Italian Baroque poet and literary critic.

Biography
Born to an ancient Genoese family connected with the Grimaldi, Cebà attended the University of Padua, where he studied under Sperone Speroni, and Giason Denores. He specialized in Greek language and literature. On his return to Genoa in 1591 he became a member of the prestigious Accademia degli Addormentati (Academy of the Sleepers), and soon distinguished himself by his academic lectures. He lived most of his life in Genoa. He was ordained a cleric in 1605, after his beloved Geronima Di Negro had become a nun. Cebà was a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti. He died in Genoa in April 1623.

Cebà had an extremely close relationship, by correspondence only, with the jewish poet and writer Sara Copia Sullam, whom he admired but whom he never actually met. He appears to have fallen in love with Sara, and constantly urged her to convert to Christianity, but she resisted. Ansaldo and Sara corresponded from spring 1618 until spring 1622. The correspondence is known through Cebà's Lettere di Ansaldo Cebà scritte a Sarra Copia (Genoa: Giuseppe Pavoni, 1623).

Works
His first book of verse, Rime, appeared in 1596 at Padua and Antwerp. The love-poetry of a Petrarchan stamp which it contained - celebrating a Genoese lady, Aurelia Spinola - gave way in a second volume of Rime (Rome, 1611) to religious and moral themes. At Genoa in 1615 he published an epic poem entitled La reina Esther. The poem was a huge success. Sara Copia Sullam addressed an enthusiastic anonymous letter full of praise to the Genoese poet, telling him that she was so touched by the poem that she slept with it under her pillow. Cebà's epic probably induced Leon of Modena to translate Solomon Usque's tragedy on the same subject from Spanish into Italian verse. Giacomo Lomellini had his palace frescoed by Domenico Fiasella with a cycle of paintings inspired by Cebà's poem.

In 1617 Cebà published his political treatise Cittadino di Repubblica; in 1620 his translation of Theophrastus' Characters. In 1621, also at Genoa, appeared the Esercitii Accademici, and the dialogue Il Gonzaga over del Poema Heroico, in which he tried to prove that Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso had adhered to the classical unities in their epics. The same year he published also a tragedy, La Principessa Silandra, and the historical treatise Il Principio dell'Historia Romana. A second epic poem, Il Furio Camillo, a second tragedy, Alcippo Spartano, and two volumes of Lettere, came out in 1623, the year of Cebà's death. A third tragedy, Le Gemelle Capovane, was printed for the first time in Scipione Maffei's Teatro Italiano (vol. 2), Verona, 1723.