Born in Lucca, Ragghianti studied in Pisa, where he was a pupil of Matteo Marangoni.

[1] He started his career as a scholar in 1933 with essays on the Carracci and Giorgio Vasari; later he wrote on cinema and the entertainment industry as expressions of visual art, thus demonstrating his interest in all manifestations of the visual language.

[1] Ragghianti was among the founders of the Action Party and after 8 September 1943 he organized armed resistance in Tuscany.

[1] From 1952 to 1965, along with his wife Licia Collobi, he directed the art magazine SeleArte.

[3] He was a founding member of the Italian committee Comitato del Fondo Internazionale per Firenze after the 1966 Florence flood.