12 Facts About Carlo Ridolfi

Carlo Ridolfi was an Italian art biographer and painter of the Baroque period.

Carlo Ridolfi was a pupil of the painter Antonio Vassilacchi.

Carlo Ridolfi painted a Visitation for the Ognissanti and an Adoration of the Magi for San Giovanni Elemosinario in Venice.

Carlo Ridolfi copied Tintoretto's Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet in San Marcuola, before it came to the collection of King Charles I of England.

Carlo Ridolfi was certainly best known, in his own day and ever since, as an author on art.

Carlo Ridolfi was an important collector of drawings, such as Giorgio Vasari.

Carlo Ridolfi wrote La vita di Giacopo Robusti in 1642.

Carlo Ridolfi was awarded the knighthood of the Golden Cross by Pope Innocent X and a chain of gold and a medal of St Mark by the Republic of Venice, essentially for his books rather than his painting.

Subsequent Venetian chroniclers who have quoted Carlo Ridolfi include Marco Boschini, Antonio Maria Zanetti, and Luigi Lanzi.

Carlo Ridolfi was well educated in the classics, and his style is much given to rhetorical flourishes, classical comparisons and references to poetry, whilst rather lacking Vasari's talent for telling anecdote.

Carlo Ridolfi approached the larger lives in a scholarly fashion, and quoted many documents, often now vanished, that remain invaluable to art historians.

Carlo Ridolfi's work gives great insight into the way art was seen in his own day, as well as during the lives of his subjects.