The book Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel, brings the famous scientist Galileo to life, while also showing a perspective on his trial for heresy, and his relationship with his daughter Maria Celeste.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa Italy, in the same year as Shakespeare, 1564. His father, Vincenzio Galilei, was a musician interested in the revival of classical Greek musical forms. Giulia Galilei was his mother. He got his name from Galileo Buonaiuti (a physician in the family) after whom the family had taken the last name Galilei. Galileo had sister, Virginia, and brother Michelangelo. His mistress Marina Gamba of Venice (outside of marriage) gave birth to daughters Virginia and Livia, and then bore him a son, Vincenzio. Galileo never married Marina, and she eventually married another man when Galileo left for Florence after being named chief philosopher and mathematician by the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
His son, Vincenzio, had been legitimized in a fiat by the grand duke of Tuscany and gone off to study law at the University of Pisa. But Galileo's daughters, Virginia and Livia, were placed in the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, where Virginia took the name of "Maria Celeste," (this was a tribute to her father's fascination with the heavens) and Livia took the name of "Arcangela" after becoming nuns. The sheer fact that Galileo had not married Marina Gamba was reason enough to deem Maria unmarriageable. Having his daughters sent to a convent seemed to be the best way for him to protect them. This shows that the status of women during this time period was still very different than that of men; they were the lesser of the two sexes, and still seen as just things to be gained in .
marriage. Maria devoted herself to the extremely hard life of the Poor Clares after this. Her and her father sent each other letters regularly, and 124 of her letters to Galileo are still around (his letters to her were most likely destroyed).