Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico

Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was born in Lucca in 1910. He was an art critic, historian, and theorist. A student at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, he graduated under the guidance of Matteo Marangoni with a thesis on the Carracci. In 1935, he founded the journal Critica d’Arte; in 1937, he met Licia Collobi, who would become his wife the following year. An anti-fascist, he was among the founders of the Action Party (Partito d’Azione), serving as commander and political commissar of the Rosselli Brigade and the Giustizia e Libertà division during the liberation war in Tuscany between 1943 and 1944.

In 1952, he founded the journal seleARTE, with the support of Adriano Olivetti. From 1948, he was full professor of Modern Art at the University of Pisa, where he also established the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints (Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe) in 1957. Ragghianti’s interests, reflected both in his scholarly publications and in the exhibitions he organized—for example at La Strozzina in Florence—spanned from ancient to contemporary art, design, and architecture, as well as cinema and theater.

He died in Florence in 1987.

Art Historian