Giulia Ammannati

Giulia Ammannati (1 January 1538, Villa Basilica – 1 August 1620, Florence) was a woman from Lucca and Livorno area who is best known as the mother of Galileo Galilei. She was a member of a prosperous family. Her ancestor Iacopo Ammannati was the secretary of Pope Pius II. Life Giulia Ammannati was born in 1538 in the small village of Villa Basilica. Her father, Cosimo, was a wood merchant of Pescia, who moved to Pisa 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.