Alarico Carli was born in Florence, but at the age of seven he left the city for the Casentino area, to where his family had moved and where he studied the classics and also experienced the passions of the early Risorgimento. He returned to Florence to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti under the direction of Giuseppe Bezzuoli (who, incidentally, painted one of the most famous frescoes in the Tribune of Galileo in the Specola of Florence) and came into contact with liberal circles. He volunteered in 1848 and fought at Montanara, but the breakup of the army of Tuscany brought him back to Florence, after a short period with the forces of Lombardy.

His artistic work was accompanied by scholarly activities: the meeting with Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni, arranged by Carli’s brother Evandro, was the springboard that launched him towards research and familiarity with the major libraries of Europe. Besides his studies, Carli played a part in the National Guard as an officier and was also involved in an intense social activity, contributing to the foundation of schools for the working class, for which he offered his services as a volunteer teacher.

After working in the Ufficio d’Arte of the municipality of Florence, in 1884 he moved to the Accademia della Crusca as a general helper, and in 1887 he started working in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze as an assistant on the national edition of Galileo that was being prepared by Isidoro Del Lungo and Antonio Favaro. In 1891 he joined the Biblioteca Nazionale with the special task of arranging and cataloguing correspondence, which was intended for a project entitled Archivio della letteratura italiana. This was a task to which, having become disillusioned with politics, he devoted the rest of his life.

Employed as an “amanuensis” he worked with Favaro on a catalogue of the Galileo collection, which should have been published in the ministerial collection “Indici e cataloghi”, but instead was never printed. The three volumes in the hand of Carli are to this day preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. Before a serious loss of sight prevented him from collaborating on particularly difficult projects, he completed the Bibliografia galileiana, together as ever with Antonio Favaro, towards whom for some years he harboured a secret hostility, the result of reciprocal misunderstandings, which fortunately were later cleared up. Alarico Carli died in Florence in 1900, struck down by a heart attack while he was walking in the street.