In this essay the author intends to put again in light the figure and the work of Roberto Ridolfi as central for the Twentieth century history of philology. The great Florentine scholar was able to weave together vast interdisciplinary skills in order to give the philologist a complete role as historian, bibliologist and exegete as an indispensable modality in the exploration and edition of texts. Ridolfi was in fact an extraordinary publisher of unpublished texts, especially of the historical works by Guicciardini, and publisher, among many, of fundamental texts by Machiavelli and Savonarola. The essay also highlights the ability of Ridolfi to combine the philological work with historical and biographical reconstructions of great quality so as to build a figure of philologist as an all-round philologist, whose lack in the current critical scenario is complained by Anselmi.