Cosimo Ridolfi

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Monument to Cosimo Ridolfi by Raffaello Romanelli, 1898
Piazza Santo Spirito
Florence, December 2022

“As cars, buses and motorbikes hurtle by in via San Agostino, a white marble monument seems defenceless as it stands precariously on the southern tip of Florence’s piazza Santo Spirito. Deep in thought, with one hand under his chin and the other resting on a book perched on top of a draped pedestal, the elegantly dressed man in the statue seems oblivious to any impending danger surrounding him. Placed in the piazza in 1898, the sculpture is the work of Raffaello Romanelli, one of a still-existing dynasty of Florentine sculptors whose work includes the bust of Benvenuto Cellini on the Ponte Vecchio. The inscription on pink marble at the base of statue tells us we are looking at the agronomist and politician Cosimo Ridolfi, who was ‘an outstanding teacher of the great agrarian disciplines and the untiring promoter of Italian farmers.’ Cosimo Ridolfi, the son of Marchese Luigi Ridolfi and his wife, Anastasia Frescobaldi, was born in Florence on November 28, 1794, into an old and privileged aristocratic family. When Cosimo was six, his father died. His mother not only oversaw his academic education but ensured that the boy spent time out in the open air on the family estate at Meleto, near Castelfiorentino in Val d’Elsa. There he quickly developed a love of the land and under the tutelage of the estate manager, Agostino Testaferrata, learnt the basics of agronomy, which he soon supplemented by studying physics, chemistry, botany, economics and geography.” (The statue of Cosimo Ridolfi, The Florentine)