Corrado Ricci (Ravenna 1858 – Rome 1934) was an art historian and heritage manager. He started his career serving as director of the Pinacotheca in Parma (1893) and was thereafter appointed as director of the Galleria Estense in Modena (1894–1898), director of the National Museum in Ravenna and superintendent (sovrintendente) of the monuments in the same area (1897–1906), director of the Pinacotheca of Brera in Milan (1898–1903) and of the museums in Florence (1903–1906); finally, in 1906, he was nominated General Director of Antiquities and Fine Arts, a national office for which he moved to Rome. Serving in this role, Ricci promoted some crucial laws about the administration and preservation of artistic heritage in Italy. In 1918, he established, in Rome, the Istituto di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte (Institute of Archaeology and History of Art), of which he became president in 1919 after quitting as General Director (he remained the institute’s president until his death in 1934). Member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since 1921), Ricci was nominated senator for the National Fascist Party and president of the Central Commission (from 1929, Superior Council) of Antiquities and Fine Arts in 1923. In 1925, Ricci was among the signatories of the Manifest of Fascist Intellectuals. During the Fascist period, he played a prominent role in several committees for some of the regime’s most important archaeological projects and restoration works, including the excavations of the Imperial Fora and the construction of Via dell’Impero (today Via dei Fori Imperiali), the recovery of the Roman ships in Lake Nemi, and the restoration of Palazzo Venezia, which was made the seat of the Istituto di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte in 1922 (the current Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte is still housed in the Palazzo).

Bibliography

Bertoni, Clotilde. 2016. ‘Ricci, Corrado’. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. 87. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana.

Antonino Nastasi