RUGGIERI, Ferdinando

Italian architect, active in Florence in the early part of the 18th century. Ruggieri was instrumental in developing and defining the Italian Baroque movement.

Despite being one of the leading Baroque architects of his generation, he was unfortunate that, as very little construction work took place in Florence whilst he was in his pomp, his work was largely confined to the theoretical. Of those buildings whose construction he did oversee, his crowning achievement was the design for the façade of the Complesso di San Firenze (1715), inspired by that of San Gaetano in Piazza Antinori. In addition, he was commissioned to reconstruct the church of Santa Felicità in 1735 and later rebuilt the small bell tower of San Lorenzo that had been destroyed by a conflagration in 1427.

Although reluctant to leave his beloved Florence, and thereby limiting his opportunities for practical employment, he did work in Siena on the reconstruction of the Sansedoni Palace and in Empoli, where in 1736 he oversaw the reconstruction of the collegiate church of St Andrew in the Florentine Romanesque style. In the two-tone marble façade, he faithfully maintained the Tuscan Romanesque (or proto-Renaissance) style from the base.

His cartographic endeavours include only one map, his important 1731 Pianta Della Città di Firenze which would become the standard map of Florence for the next 150 years.