RICCI, CORRADO. - Archaeologist and art critic, b. in Ravenna on 18 April 1858, d. in Rome on 5 June 1934.
A student at the University of Bologna (where he took his degree in law on 5 July 1882), he began his work as a scholar and archaeologist with the exploration of the crypt of the Ravennate 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 instalments in the years 1877-88) is a youthful work, but in many respects still very useful and unsurpassed from the other 5 editions up to 1923. In Nov. 1882 he entered as an assistant pupil at the National Library of Florence, beginning that life of work and study which was to lead him to the rank, first of director general of Fine Arts (1906), then, in 1929, to that of president of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts. The founding and organization of the Institute of Archaeology and Sto-by In memoria di C. R., edited by the Int. di Arch. e St. dell'Art. Rome 1925
RICCI, CORRADO - Portrait.
history of art. In 1923 he was appointed senator of the Kingdom. His activity extended to the principal picture galleries of Italy — Parma, Modena, Brescia, which he reorganized in 1903 — to the Florentine Galleries, and to the Capitoline. His name is also linked to the arrangement of the Imperial Fora and of the great streets that in Rome lead to the Colosseum. But to monumental Ravenna he always gave the best of his activity; he restored and repaired its basilicas and other monumental buildings, work that he courageously began as early as Nov. 1897, as superintendent of monuments. Of this spirit of research and loving study there remains today what may be considered his principal work: the Tavole storiche dei mosaici di Ravenna.
He wished his body 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 note cards be preserved in the Biblioteca Classense.
Bibliography6 works
Mario Mazzotti