Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

FEDERICO CESI, THE FIRST ACADEMY, AND UMBRIA 65succeeded in achieving and maintaining, for more than a century, a positionof high prestige, and Umbria, in the 1500s and 1600s was a place ofremarkable possibilities and accomplishments for the family.In fact, contemporaneously with their rise in Roman circles, the mainbranches of the family established holdings in several important centers ofLazio (Cantalupo, Tivoli, Frascati, Nettuno, Monticelli etc.) and also inUmbria (Cesi, Acquasparta, Todi, Narni, etc.). And in these centers the Cesi‘created as continuing testimony of their presence or dominion, as places ofleisure or of representation and administrative offices, villas, palaces andhunting lodges. 91 Thereafter, the bishops of the Cesi family succeeded themselvesin the manner of regular dynasties in Todi and Narni. In Todi, AngeloCesi, head of one of the main branches of the family, ordered a completerehabilitation of the inside of the ancient cathedral, built the grandiosediocesan palace, and sponsored various projects of urban renewal.Among the family residences in Lazio and Umbria, certainly the mosteminent was the one in Acquasparta, rising up in the center of an estatewhich in 1540, Giangiacomo Cesi, grandfather of Federico the Lyncean,and his wife Isabella of Alviano, had obtained from Pier Luigi Farnese inexchange for their residence in Alviano. Giovanna Sapori writes,After the Cesi had tried without success to acquire dominion overtheir place of origin, their installation in nearby Acquasparta and thegrowing importance attributed to the construction of a residencethere reflect the very special attention of the family for those lands. 92We cannot allow ourselves, however, to overlook, in favor of Acquaspartaand its magnificent palace, other Umbrian places admirably recalled byGabrieli in reference to the Cesi family and, above all, to the life and culturaland civic commitment of Federico the Lyncean. Narni, for example.In the abbey of Sant’Angelo near Narni, the residence of an uncle bishop,upon whose death he would inherit it, ‘Federico Cesi the Lyncean used toretire from time to time to study’, and ‘many of his letters were datedfrom this place’. 93 In one of these, dated 5 December 1617, Federico writesto his dear friend Johannes Faber:Neither am I wasting my time, amid books of physics, philosophy,metaphysics, utilizing in this hermitage the little time that I man-91 G. Sapori, op. cit., p. 21.92 Ibid., p. 22, cf. pp. 22-38 for an account of the construction of the palace alongwith its architectural details and artistic merits.93 G. Gabrieli, Federico Cesi Linceo nella sua ‘Abadia angelica’ presso Narni, op. cit., p. 143.