Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti
Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was an Italian art critic, historian, philosopher of art and politician.
Born in Lucca, Ragghianti studied in Pisa, where he was a pupil of. His education was influenced by Benedetto Croce and by his theory of "pure visibility"; then he approached and deepened the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Alois Riegl, Julius von Schlosser.
He started his career as a scholar in 1933 with essays on the Carracci and Giorgio Vasari; later he wrote on cinema and entertainment industry as expressions of visual art, thus demonstrating his interest in all manifestations of the visual language. In 1935 he founded together with Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli the magazine Critica d'arte.
Ragghianti was among the founders of the Action Party and after September 8, 1943 he organized armed resistance in Tuscany. He was president of the Tuscan National Liberation Committee and headed the liberation of Florence on November 8, 1944. Ragghianti was undersecretary to the arts and entertainment in the Parri cabinet. From 1952 to 1965, along with his wife Licia Collobi, he directed the art magazine SeleArte. He was a member of the jury at the 16th Venice International Film Festival.
