IMPERIAL, FRANCISCO. - Spanish poet of Italian origin, b. in Genoa about 1360, d. between the first and second decades of the 15th century in Seville, where his father, a jeweller, had moved for commercial reasons.
Among the most notable poets of the Cancionero de Bueno (ed. F. Michel, I, Leipzig 1860), he introduced the hendecasyllable into Spanish poetry, thus initiating the Italianizing current, and pursued elegance of style and, often, didactic aims. Sensitive to the charm of Dante’s poetry, he was its first imitator in Spain and chose him as his guide in the Decir a las siete virtudes (no. 250 of the aforementioned Cancionero), an allegorical vision modelled upon passages from the last two canticles of Dante’s Commedia.
BIBL.: M. Chaves, Micer F. I. (apuntes bibliográficos), Seville 1869; A. Farinelli, Appunti su Dante in Spagna nell'età media, in Giorn. st. lett. it., suppl. 8 (1905), pp. 2-4 and passim; id., Italia e Spagna, I, Turin 1929, p. 339; id., ibid. 1929, p. 151; M. Menéndez y Pelayo, Historia de la poesía castellana, I, Madrid 1911, pp. 377-429; id., Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, ibid. 1918, p. LXVII. Enzo Navarra