Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (1798 -1837) was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist. Despite living in a secluded town in the conservative Stato della Chiesa, he engaged deeply and enthusiastically with the foremost thinkers and concepts of the Enlightenment, and created a remarkable and renowned poetic work that secured his place as one of the greatest poets of modern Italy. He died of cholera in Naples in 1837.
