Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTEFederico Cesi (1585-1630) was born in Rome to Federico and OlimpiaOrsini. He had a refined upbringing, although the precise details of his educationare not known. On 17 August 1603 he founded in Rome, together withStelluti, De Filiis, and Heckius, the Accademia dei Lincei, but for severalmonths thereafter he suffered the opposition of his family, and particularly ofhis father who was, it seems, rather uncultivated and suspicious of his son’scultural ambitions. In April 1604 young Federico was constrained to undertakea sojourn in Naples, meant to separate him from his companions, but theforced exile offered him the opportunity to meet Giovanbattista della Portawho, from then up until the time of his later association with Galileo, was hisprincipal reference point and model for the Academy. In this early stage theAcademy necessarily lived above all through the epistolary communicationsamong its founders. But in 1610, following some substantial difficulties in themanagement of his assets, Federico Cesi the elder was forced to turn overadministration of the family estate to his son. Subsequently the life of theassociation began to proceed apace. It was in 1611, at a meeting of theAcademy in Rome, that the Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger) was presented,and the same year saw the induction of Galileo as a member of theAcademy. The following year witnessed the founding of the first Lyceum inNaples. In 1614 Federico married Artemisia Colonna, but his wife sufferedfrom uncertain health and she was taken ill soon after the wedding. She dieda little over a year later. In 1617 Cesi was remarried to Isabella Salviati, andnumerous children were born of this matrimony though many of them livedonly a short time. Beginning the following year and through 1624 Cesi madehis home in Acquasparta. This was his most productive time in terms of theAcademy’s cultural program and saw publication of some fundamental volumesfor the history of modern science. But after the brief exultant moment(the “marvellous juncture”) following the election to the papacy of MaffeoBarberini, Urban VIII, who was very close to the Academy, Cesi’s last yearswere marked by his family’s deteriorating finances, by a certain disenchantmentwith respect to his project for the Academy, and finally by the declininghealth of Federico himself, who died in Acquasparta on 1 August 1630.