Francisco Imperial  Francisco Imperial was a Genoese poet who lived in Seville and wrote lyric and allegorical poetry in Spanish around the turn of the 15th century. All of his preserved poetry can be found in the Cancionero de Baena. Very little can be said with certainty about the biography of Imperial. In the rubrics that appear above three of his poems in the "Cancionero de Baena", we are told that he was born in Genoa and lived in Seville. Gonzalo Argote de Molina, a 16th-century Spanish genealogist, reports that Imperial belonged to one of the noble families of Genoa, from which families two consuls were periodically appointed to promote Genoese interests in Seville. Some have connected Francisco Imperial to a “Jaimes Emperial,” who is mentioned in the will of Pedro the Cruel, suggesting that this Jaimes Emperial may be the father of the poet, but this identification is uncertain. It seems that Imperial served as the lieutenant of the Admiral of Castile: a 1403 letter from King Martin I of Aragon is addressed to “Miçer Francisco Imperial, lugar tenient de almirant de Castilla.” Another document from 1409 refers to the “herederos [heirs] de miçer Francisco Imperial”: this has been viewed as indicating that by this date the poet had died. These documents constitute the extent of our knowledge about Imperial’s life. The lack of biographical detail on Imperial has led scholars to look in his poetry for clues to his life story. Archer Woodford has suggested that Imperial was an ecclesiastic, drawing this conclusion based on his apparent familiarity with and references to the Catholic liturgy. Colbert Nepaulsingh has asserted that the appointment of Alfonso Enriquez as the admiral of Castile (a position that he claims Imperial could have expected to assume himself), signifies a rupture between Imperial and Enrique III, and interprets some elements in Imperial’s poetry as references to this hostility. All of these suggestions appear to be highly conjectural. Imperial seems to have been a poet of some note. He is one of the best represented poets in the "Cancionero de Baena", and in his "Proemio e carta al condestable don Pedro de Portugal", the Marques de Santillana singles out Imperial (and only Imperial, among writers in Spanish) as being worthy of the title of “poeta.”