Alvise Cornaro was an Italian 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

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, the son of an innkeeper, who claimed a connection to the noble Cornaro

Cornaro

The Cornaro, also known as Corner, are an illustrious patrician family in Venice, from which for centuries senior office-holders and Doges sprung...

 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"), (1566).

As a patron, Cornaro sat to Tintoretto

Tintoretto

Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...

 for his portrait and guided the career of the Veronese artist-architect Giovanni Maria Falconetto

Giovanni Maria Falconetto

Giovanni Maria Falconetto was an Italian architect and artist. He designed the first fully Renaissance building in Padua, the Loggia Cornaro, a garden loggia for Alvise Cornaro built as a Roman doric arcade...

, whose Loggia Cornaro (1524) for Alvise's garden was the first fully Renaissance building in the Veneto

Veneto

Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...

.