RICCI, CORRADO. - Archaeologist and art critic, b. in Ravenna on 18 Apr. 1858, d. in Rome on 5 June 1934.
A student at the University of Bologna (where he graduated in law on 5 July 1882), he began his work as a scholar and archaeologist with the exploration of the crypt of the Ravenna basilica of S. Pietro Maggiore or S. Francesco, which he conducted in 1877 together with Edoardo Gardella. The first edition of his guide to Ravenna and its surroundings (issued in installments from 1877 to 1888) is a youthful work, but in many respects still highly useful and not surpassed by the other five editions up to 1923. In Nov. 1882 he entered as a student-assistant at the National Library of Florence, beginning that life of work and study which was to lead him to the rank, first of General Director of Fine Arts (1906), and then, in 1929, to that of President of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts. He was also responsible for the founding and organization of the Institute of Archaeology and Art History. In 1923 he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom. His activity extended to the principal Italian picture galleries of Parma, Modena, Brera, which he reorganized in 1903, and to the Florentine and Capitoline galleries. His name is also linked to the arrangement of the Imperial Forums and the great roads leading in Rome to the Colosseum. But it was in monumental Ravenna that he gave the best of his efforts; he restored and conserved its basilicas and other monumental buildings, work which he courageously began in Nov. 1897 as Superintendent of Monuments. Of this spirit of research and loving study there remains today what may be considered his masterpiece: the Tavole storiche dei mosaici di Ravenna.
He wished his remains to rest in the cemetery of his city and that all his books, the correspondence of about 80,000 letters on artistic, historical or literary subjects, and his notes be preserved in the Biblioteca Classense.