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 encouraged the reclamation activities of the Venetian Republic. In another, more humanistic and artistic field, he protected men of letters and artists and built splendid buildings and villas.
But his fame rests on having taught men, in an engaging way, the beauty and happiness of a sober life. He owed his recovered health at the age of forty, after severe suffering, to this sobriety: and from then on he became the champion of a way of life which he continually refined as if it were a work of art, enabling him to live to a very advanced age in perfect tranquillity and cheerfulness of spirit. Cornaro distilled the essence of this experience in a short treatise *Della vita sobria* [On a Sober Life], which he published at the age of eighty-three (Padua, 1558); this was followed in 1561, 1563 and 1565 (Padua) by three other writings on the same subject. All of these works had numerous editions and translations down to our own day and cast a light of human sympathy around the cordial figure of their author. He won his battle not by persuading and converting his readers through his often sophistical reasoning, but by offering them the testimony of his vigorous old age, portrayed in a crystal-clear light, with accents here and there even poetic. This lyricism of the charming little work, to which a touch of ingenuous coquetry does no harm, is the truest secret of its artistic as well as human validity.