ALCÁZAR, BALTASAR del. — Satirical poet, born in Seville in 1530, died in Ronda in 1606. As a young man he served on the galleys of the Marquis of S. Cruz; after leaving the army, he held political and administrative offices, but his preferred occupation was literature. Trained in the Latin and Italian classics, his temperament inclined him above all toward poetry of epigrammatic content and satirical, playful tone, so much so that he may be defined as the Sevillian Martial; and Martial was indeed among the poets he most cherished and imitated, although he generally softened his tone and almost made it provincial.
Among his most successful compositions in this genre are the Cena jocosa and the Modo de vivir en la vejez. A Petrarchist, and, together with other men of letters who belonged to the circle gathered around Count don Alvaro Colón y Portugal and his wife Eleonora di Milano, a representative of the Italianizing Sevillian school, he also cultivated love poetry with inspired and expressive felicity. Also deserving of particular mention are several deeply moving religious lyrics, such as the sonnet to Jesus and the Closa a un Crucifijo.