Giulia Ammannati

Giulia Ammannati (1 January 1538, Villa Basilica – 1 August 1620, Florence) was a woman from the Lucca and Livorno area who is best known as the mother of Galileo Galilei. She was a member of a prosperous family. Her ancestor, Jacopo Piccolomini-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. Additionally, her brother Leoni guaranteed to buy food for a year. In his absence, a customs officer Muzio Tedaldi looked after the family and sent regular reports to Vincenzio. In 1574, Ammannati and the children rejoined her husband in Florence. 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.

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.