Luigi Cornaro

Alvise Cornaro, often Italianised Luigi (1484,[1][2] 1467 or 1464[3] – 8 May 1566), was a Venetian nobleman and patron of arts, also remembered for his four books of Discorsi (published 1583–1595) about the secrets to living long.

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.

When he was about 40, Cornaro found himself exhausted and in poor health, a condition he attributed to a hedonistic lifestyle with excessive eating, drinking, and sexual licentiousness.

[6] 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.

He rejected ascetics who believed man must suffer in this life to attain salvation in the next, arguing that there was no reason one could not enjoy both his earthly existence and his heavenly one.