The Foundation is based in Lucca and is named after Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1910-1987), one of the foremost critics, historians, and theorists of art of the 20th century, and his wife Licia Collobi (1914-1989), also a distinguished scholar.
The Origin and Objectives
The “Licia and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti Art Studies Center” was established in 1981 through the donation of the Ragghianti couple’s library, photo library, and archive to the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. In October 1984, the Center became “Foundation Center for Art Studies Licia and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti”, supported by the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, the Tuscany Region, the Province of Lucca, and the Municipality of Lucca. According to the donors’ intentions, the primary goal has always been to “provide the city and the area of northwestern Tuscany, as well as any interested Italian or foreigner, with a tool for studying art, in history and in the present.” In 1992, the Foundation received a donation of the library, photo library, and archive of Pier Carlo Santini, who served as its scientific director from 1984 to 1993.
Archive, Fondazione Ragghianti 
Library, Fondazione Ragghianti
The institute’s vocation is to create quality initiatives, confirming a significant territorial rooting while broadening the perspective to increasingly wide and international collaborations. As Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti wrote, “Lucca can become a permanent laboratory for study, a center of cultural experiences that adds new potential to its great traditions.”
Who was Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti: Between Art and Politics
Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was born in Lucca on March 18, 1910. He studied at the University of Pisa under the guidance of Matteo Marangoni; he would later teach at the same university until 1972. His education was influenced by the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce and the “pure visibility.” He later delved into the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Alois Riegl, and Julius von Schlosser.
Ragghianti was actively involved in the fight against fascism: he was among the founders of the Action Party and, from September 8, 1943, organized armed resistance in Tuscany. He served as president of the Tuscan National Liberation Committee and head of the provisional government that liberated Florence in 1944. During the Parri cabinet, he was undersecretary for arts and entertainment; he continued to address institutional issues such as university reform, teacher training, and the protection of cultural heritage. His commitment to introducing the teaching of film history and criticism in Italian universities was crucial.
He made his debut as a scholar in 1933 with a contribution on the Carracci, published in “La Critica,” directed by Benedetto Croce. Among his early essays are those on film language, which demonstrate an early and pioneering interest in the subject, to which Ragghianti was connected throughout his life, as evidenced by the three volumes on The Arts of Vision (1974-1979), a synthesis of his research.
Together with Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, he founded the magazine “Critica d’Arte” in 1935, which was also contributed to by Roberto Longhi.
From 1952 to 1965, together with his wife Licia Collobi and with the financial support of Adriano Olivetti, he directed “seleARTE,” one of the most important cultural periodicals of the post-war period, which reached print runs of up to 55,000 copies. Connected to this experience was the production of the series seleARTE cinematografica, which includes eighteen of the twenty-one “critofilms” made by Ragghianti from 1948, with The Deposition by Raphael, until 1964, with Michelangiolo. Thanks to these short films, which enjoyed great success, he made the cinematic medium an effective tool for critical and educational investigation, addressing various topics, from Renaissance painting (Andrea del Castagno, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli) to 20th-century art (Rosai), from Etruscan and Roman art to architecture and urban planning (Lucca, Pisa, Pompeii, Venice).
The interests of Ragghianti are evidenced by books such as Comments on Art Criticism (1946) and Profile of Art Criticism in Italy (1948); among his studies of historical-philological reconstruction, we recall Art in Italy (1967) and, among those dedicated to the interpretation of modern painting, Impressionism (1946) and Mondrian and the Art of the 20th Century (1962).
Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was the founder and promoter of many cultural institutions, including the Institute of Art History and the National Collection of Drawings and Prints of the University of Pisa and the International University of Art in Florence. In 1981, with his wife, he established the Licia and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti Study Center in Lucca.
He died in Florence on August 3, 1987.
The “Pier Carlo Santini Sculpture Gardens”
The Ragghianti Foundation possesses a collection of over seven hundred works – including paintings, graphics, sculptures, photographs, collages and mixed media – received mainly as donations from the artists themselves. The collection represents an essential tool for knowledge and public education, and it clearly reflects the openness to every expressive form that constituted one of the guiding lines of thought and action of Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti as well as Pier Carlo Santini, his student and first director.
It should be noted that, not being a museum nor possessing rooms for permanent exhibitions, the Foundation does not have the possibility to display most of the pieces of the collection in a stable manner, which is stored in deposits, obviously available for viewing by scholars who request it. An exception is a core of about thirty sculptures, which were previously placed in the library and cloisters of the monumental complex of San Micheletto, home to the Foundation, located within the city walls of Lucca, near Porta Elisa and the Botanical Garden. Over the years, however, logistical needs and extemporaneous factors had caused the arrangement of the works to lose the logic with which it was created. The task of designing the new layout, entrusted to architect Mauro Lovi, led to the creation of the path that, with the inauguration on December 17, 2016, took the name of the “Pier Carlo Santini Sculpture Gardens.”
This initiative aimed to create a route that helps those entering San Micheletto to immediately understand where they are, that is, in a place of beauty, art, and culture, thus characterizing it in a “museum-like” sense, in the most vibrant meaning of the term.
Future Programs
Despite the consequences of the Covid-19 epidemic, even during 2020, the Ragghianti Foundation managed to confirm its programming and to carry on high-quality editorial, exhibition, archival, educational, etc. activities. The year 2021 will be an important year, marking the fortieth anniversary of the institution. For the occasion, a large interdisciplinary exhibition will be organized, and the critical edition of the correspondence of Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti with the most notable personalities with whom he had epistolary contact will begin.
Overall, the program of initiatives of the Foundation for the year 2021 unequivocally reaffirms the objectives and nature of a center for studies, research, promotion, and production of art that, for several years now, has been pursuing a cultural proposal whose seriousness and quality are universally appreciated.
Educational workshops 
Publishing
