Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837), also known as "the hunchback of Recanati", was an Italian poet, philosopher, essayist and philologist. He is widely acknowledged to have been one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century. Although he lived in a secluded town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment, and, by his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. The extraordinarily lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central protagonist in the European and international literary and cultural landscape