Giulia Ammannati (1 January 1538, Villa Basilica – 1 August 1620,

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico a ...

) was a woman from Lucca and Livorno area who is best known as the mother of

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

. She was a member of a prosperous family. Her ancestor Iacopo Ammannati was the secretary of

Pope Pius II Pope Pius II ( la, Pius PP. II, it, Pio II), born Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini ( la, Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus, links=no; 18 October 1405 – 14 August 1464), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 August ...

Life

Giulia Ammannati was born in 1538 in the small village of Villa Basilica. Her father, Cosimo, was a wood merchant of

Pescia Pescia () is an Italian city in the province of Pistoia, Tuscany, central Italy. It is located in a central zone between the cities Lucca and Florence, on the banks of the river of the same name. History Archaeological excavations have suggest ...

, who moved to

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the city ...

before 1536. Among the ancestors of the Ammannati family was the secretary of Pope Pius II, Iacopo Ammanati. Ammannati had three sisters, Diamante, Dorotea and Ermellina, and a brother, Leone. On 5 July 1562, Ammannati married Vincenzio Galilei at Pisa. By this time Ammannati's father already died and her brother Leone was to take charge of the dowry. Ammannati brought a hundred scudi as a dowry, a half in cash and the rest in clothes. Additionally, her brother Leoni guaranteed to buy food for a year. One year after they married the Galilei family rented a house in Via dei Mercanti where Vincenzio Galilei established music school which had no financial success. Therefore, Galilei, a musician, was forced to enter the silk and wood trade. On 15 February 1564, Ammannati gave birth to their first child, Galileo in the Ammannati family house in via Giusti, in the San Francesco district in Pisa where Ammannati's mother Lucrezia and sister Dorotea lived. In 1566 Vincenzio Galileo moved to Florence leaving Ammannati and Galileo in Pisa. In his absence a customs officer Muzio Tedaldi looked after the family and sent regular reports to Vincenzio. In 1574, Ammannati with children rejoined her husband in Florence. During first ten years of marriage, Ammannati gave birth to three more children: Benedetto (birth date unknown), Virginia in 1573 and Anna in 1574. Unfortunately, both Benedetto and Anna died prematurely. In 1580, Ammannuti gave birth to one more daughter, Lena, who also died soon. Totally, there were eleven children in the Galilei family. After the death of Vincenzo Galilei in 1591, the oldest son, Galileo, who already was a professor of mathematics in Pisa, took the burden of sustaining Ammannati and his siblings. As Galileo moved to

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and '' comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

Ammannati sent him letters in which she complained of her son's neglect. In 1609 Ammannati wrote a letter from Florence to Galileo's domestic servants, Alessandro Piersanti where she expressed concern that she hadn't heard anything from him for several weeks. The same year she visited Galileo in Padua and returned to Florence with her granddaughter Virginia, whom she took care of until Galileo's return to Tuscany the following year. Giulia Ammannati died in August 1620 in Florence and was buried in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in

Oltrarno The Oltrarno (''beyond the Arno'') is a quarter of Florence, Italy. It is located south of the River Arno. It contains part of the historic centre of Florence and many notable sites such as the church Santo Spirito di Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, Be ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ammannati, Giulia 1538 births 1620 deaths 16th-century Italian women