Gabriello Chiabrera was an Italian poet whose introduction of new metres and a Hellenic style enlarged the range of lyric forms available to later Italian poets.
Background
Chiabrera was of patrician descent, and was born at Savona, a little town in the domain of the Genoese republic, twenty-eight years after the birth of Pierre de Ronsard, with whom he has far more in common than with the great Greek whose echo he sought to make himself.
Education
As a boy he was sent to Rome for his education, but after attendance at a Jesuit college and some years of service under Cardinal Cornaro, he was obliged to leave the papal court, for his lively character had involved him in a series of duels and disputes.
Career
Chiabrera's verse falls mainly into the traditional "Pindaric" and the "Anacreontic" forms.
In the latter style he composed a number of fresh and sparkling lyrics that are still admired.
The content of his verses is conventional and hardly above the level of his century.
His revenge of an insult offered him obliged him to betake himself once more to Savona, where, to amuse himself, he read poetry, and particularly Greek.
Both were destined to suffer eclipse as great and sudden as had been their glory.
Setting aside his epics and dramas (one of the latter received the honours of translation at the hands of Nicolas Chretien, a sort of scenic du Bartas), much of his work remains yet readable and pleasant.
His grand Pindarics are dull, it is true, but some of his Camonette, like the anacreontics of Ronsard, are exceedingly elegant and graceful.
His autobiographical sketch is also extremely interesting.
These only contain his lyric work; all the rest he wrote has been long forgotten.