Purpose of the essay is to outline the theoretical roots of Ricci’s museum and publishing policies, inscribed within a visual disclosure plan of our archaeological artistic heritage identified as the pivot on which to build a collective identity of our nation at the dawn of its unification. These policies are closely linked to Ricci’s conception of art, recognized by himself as the formal expression of a – both individual and collective – historical feeling, finding its immediate grip on the public (...) in the optical vividness of its representational form. This conception, however, finds its aesthetic-anthropological foundation in a book belonging to Ricci’s early production: “The art of children”. (shrink)