CHIABRERA, GABRIELLO (1552-1638), Italian poet, was born at Savona on June 8, 1552. He studied philosophy at the Jesuits' college in Rome, and entered the household of a cardinal. He mixed in the literary society of his day, but presently was drawn into a quarrel which compelled him to leave Rome. He retired to Savona, where he read Pindar and Anacreon, and, no doubt, Ronsard. He determined to enrich Italian poetry with new forms, and his imitations from the classics include some successful innovations in Italian verse, which were adopted by the lyrists of the next century. The mass of Chiabrera's work is very great, epics, pastorals, odes, lyrics, satires. But his best poetry is not to be found in his more ambitious works, but in the canzonette and scherzi, written to be set to music.
His autobiographical sketch is also extremely interesting. The simple old poet, with his adoration of Greek (when a thing pleased him greatly he was wont to talk of it as "Greek Verse"), his delight in journeys and sight-seeing, his dislike for literary talk save with intimates and equals, his vanities and vengeances, his pride in the memory of favours bestowed on him by popes and princes, his infinite maraviglia over Virgil's versification and metaphor, his fondness for masculine rhymes and blank verse, his quiet Christianity, is a figure deserving perhaps of more study than is likely to be bestowed on that "new world" of art which it was his glory to fancy his own, by discovery and by conquest.