Cornaro, Luigi (Alvise)

CORNARO, LUIGI (ALVISE). - He belonged to the illustrious Corner family. Born in Venice in 1475 and died in Padua on 8 January 1566. Passionate about agriculture and hydraulics, he reclaimed uncultivated lands and stimulated the reclamation activity of the Venetian Republic. In a field, however, variously humanistic and artistic, he protected men of letters and artists, and built splendid buildings and villas.

But his fame rests on his having amiably taught men the beauty and happiness of the sober life. To this sobriety he owed the health he recovered at the age of 40, after grave sufferings: and from then on he became the champion of a practice of life, which he kept perfecting ever better precisely as a work of art, and which allowed him to live to a very advanced age in perfect tranquillity and joviality of spirit. The essence of this experience C. gathered in a brief treatise Della vita sobria, which he published at the age of 83 (Padua 1558), followed in '61, '63, '65 (there) by three other writings on the same subject. All had numerous editions and translations down to our own days and spread a light of human sympathy around the cordial figure of the author. Who won his battle not for having led readers along persuaded and converted by his often sophistical reasonings, but for having offered them the testimony of his most verdant old age, portrayed in a crystalline light, with an accent here and there even poetic. This lyricism of the fine little work, which is not harmed by a touch of ingenuous coquetry, is the truest secret of its artistic validity, as well as its human validity.

Arturo Pompeati