Luigi d'Este

Luigi d'Este (21 December 1538 – 30 December 1586) was an Italian Catholic cardinal,[1] the second son of the five children of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara, and Renée de Valois, daughter of Louis XII of France.

[8] In Rome he rented from the Orsini an agglomeration of case at Montegiordano, near Piazza Navona, where he kept in attendance the large famiglia or household expected of a man of his birth and position,[9] and a villa suburbana on the Quirinal that is now the residence of the President of Italy.

[9] Careless of his mounting debts,[10] Cardinal d'Este was the most influential patron of the madrigal composer Luca Marenzio, whom he employed as maestro di cappella from August 1578 until the time of his death: during the eight-year period, Marco Bizzarini observes, Marenzio published some two-thirds of his copious output.

[12] Cardinal d'Este was a generous patron of scholars, men of letters—like the poet Torquato Tasso, who was taken to Paris in 1565 in the Cardinal's household and dedicated his Rinaldo to him but was deemed mentally unstable in 1579 and confined at Ferrara for several years, during which he wrote a number of philosophical dialogues and discourses—and scientists, such as the Neapolitan polymath Giambattista della Porta,[13] whom he invited to join him in Rome in 1579.

Luigi d'Este is buried in the church of S. Maria Maggiore (commonly known as S. Francesco), Tivoli.