Keywords: Philology and History; Florence Renaissance; Print; Biography.
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Ridolfi was in fact an extraordinary publisher of unpublished texts, especially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.