CEBÀ, ANSALDO. — Poet, born in Genoa in 1565, died there in 1623. A pupil of the Jesuits and subsequently of Speroni at the University of Padua, he devoted himself to poetics, moral philosophy, and the Greek language. He was a member of his native Accademia degli Addormentati. As a young man he sang of love, but, after one of his beloved entered a convent, he turned to religious and heroic subjects, with didactic aims.
Mediocre in lyric poetry, in which he imitated Petrarch and Ronsard, in tragedy, and in epic poetry (Furio Camillo, Ester, Lazzaro il mendico), he introduced inopportune realistic scenes even into works on sacred subjects and fell far short of his intentions in merit. Learned are his notes on the Caratteri of Theophrastus, which he translated.