He copied Tintoretto's Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet in San Marcuola, before it came to the collection of King Charles I of England.

He was awarded the knighthood of the Golden Cross by Pope Innocent X and a chain of gold and a medal of St. Mark by the Republic of Venice, essentially for his books rather than his painting.

Subsequent Venetian chroniclers who have quoted Ridolfi include Marco Boschini, Antonio Maria Zanetti, and Luigi Lanzi.

As Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects was weaker on Venetian painters than Florentine ones, Ridolfi remains an important source for Venetian painting between the beginning of the Renaissance and his own day, although his accuracy is often doubted, and many of his numerous attributions, especially to Giorgione, are no longer accepted: according to Michael Hirst, "... the enormous number of paintings attributed to Giorgione by Ridolfi gravely weakens his authority".

He approached the larger lives in a scholarly fashion, and quoted many documents, often now vanished, that remain invaluable to art historians.