Cornaro

The Cornaro, known in Venetian as the Corner, were one of the twelve tribunal families of Venice and among the founders of the Great Council in 1172, claiming descent from the Roman gens Cornelia. In the fourteenth century the house split into the Great House line and the Cornaro Piscopia, named after the fief in Cyprus granted to Federico Cornaro in 1363.

Marco Cornaro was doge from 1365. Caterina Cornaro married King James II of Cyprus in 1468 and ruled the island as queen from 1474 until she ceded it to Venice in 1489.

One family cardinal commissioned Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa in 1652, while Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy, at Padua in 1678. Three more Cornaro doges followed, the last of them Giovanni II, elected in 1709.