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Alvise Cornaro, often Italianised Luigi (1467 or 1484〔The 1911 edition of the (Encyclopædia Britannica ) gives a birth date of 1467〕 – 8 May 1566), was a Venetian nobleman and patron of arts, also remembered for his four books of ''Discorsi'' (published 1583–95) about the secrets to living long and well with measure and sobriety. Born in Padua, the son of an innkeeper, who claimed a connection to the noble Cornaro family of Venice, a connection he was at pains to prove, Cornaro expanded a modest stake from his mother's brother into a fortune based on his entrepreneurial skills, especially in hydraulics that reclaimed wetlands for farming, expressed in his ''Tratto di Acque'' ("Tract on Water management") of 1566. As a patron, Cornaro sat to Tintoretto for his portrait and guided the career of the Veronese artist-architect Giovanni Maria Falconetto, whose ''Loggia Cornaro'' (1524) for Alvise's garden was the first fully Renaissance building in the Veneto. As financial advisor to the Bishop of Padua he secured for Falconetto the commission to design the ''Villa dei Vescovi'' ("Villa of the Bishops") at Luvigliano, in the Eugaean Hills, as well as his own ''Villa Cornaro'' in Este. Later in life, from about 1538, Cornaro was acquainted with the young mason who was to become Andrea Palladio.〔(Palladio's Literary Predecessors )〕 Cornaro's own views on architecture are expressed in his ''Trattato dell'Architettura'' ("Treatise on Architecture"). Cornaro constructed two theatres, the ''Odeo Cornaro'' of Padua and another in the gardens of his villa at Este. Finding himself near death at the age of 35, Cornaro modified his eating habits on the advice of his doctors and began to adhere to a calorie restriction diet, centered on the "quantifying principle" of restricting himself to only 350g of food daily (including bread, egg yolk, meat, and soup) and 414 mL of wine. His book ''Discorsi della vita sobria'' ((Discourses On the Temperate Life )), which described his regimen, was extremely successful, and "was a true reconceptualization of old age. As late as the Renaissance it was largely the negative aspects of this phase of life which were emphasized ... Cornaro’s method offered the possibility for the first time not only of a long but also a worthwhile life."〔 His first treatise was written when he was 83, and its English translation, often referred to today under the title ''The Sure and Certain Method of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life'', went through numerous editions; this was followed by three others on the same subject, composed at the ages of eighty-six, ninety-one and ninety-five respectively. The first three were published at Padua in 1558. They are written, says Joseph Addison, in the early eighteenth-century periodical ''The Spectator'' (No. 195), "with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety." He died at Padua at age 98, according to his birth and death date in the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica''; other sources give his age at death as 102. In the work known as ''Illustrissimi'', a collection of letters written by Pope John Paul I when he was Patriarch of Venice, Cornaro serves as one of the "recipients" of the letters. There are 40 letters in all, mainly to people in Italian history and fiction, but also to internationally well known fictional and historical characters such as Pinocchio, Charles Dickens, Hippocrates, and Jesus. ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Luigi Cornaro」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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