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Poliedrical figure of our '700s (Turin, 1737-1815), Tommaso Valperga di Masino belonged to the noble Piedmont family of Valperga, descendant of Guiberto, brother of Arduino marquis of Ivrea and king of Italy.
In hi youth he was captain of the king of Sardinia's galleys, but after a religious chrisis in 1761 he moved to Naples and entered the "padri filippini" congregation, becoming Theology teacher and studying as a scholar, literate and philosopher. Back in Turin in 1769, he studied physical and mathematical sciences with Lagrange, Saluzzo and Cigna. Frequenting Gaetano Emanuele Bava di San Paolo's cultural salon he found Alfieri, the man he met in Lisbona in 1772: he recognised the poet and they became friends.
Polyglot (he could speak English, French, Spanish, Arabian, Latin, Greek, Coptic and Jewish), he taught oriental languages at the university of Turin. Until 1805 he directed Palazzo Madama astronomical observatory, he was parten with the Academy of Sciences and with all the greates European academies.
The Palazzo Cisterna Library preserves the first editions of the treaty Della poesia (1806) and of a scientific written, Principes de Philosophie pour les initiés aux mathématiques (1811).
About his figure there are books like the biography in latin by his student Carlo Boucheron, De Thoma Valperga Calusio (Turin 1833) and the interesting study Le buie tracce. Intelligenza subalpina al tramonto dei Lumi, con tre lettere inedite di Tommaso Valperga di Caluso a Giambattista Bodoni, by Marco Cerruti, published in 1988 by the Library of Studies Centre of Piedmont.
In the Parenti Fund there is the first edition of the Notizie di Tommaso Valperga di Caluso, work by Cesare Saluzzo, Turin 1815.