Marco Leoni

The article offers a coherent picture of the activity of the artists belonging to the Scotti family from Laino: a thoroughly reconstructed bibliography and further archive inquiries allow to establish a corpus of artworks made in Italy, Germany, Czech Republic and Russia, and also to sketch out the biographies of these artists and their professional connections, especially within the area of Val d’Intelvi. Twelve artists – a stucco decorator, an architect and ten painters – go across five generations from the 17th to the 19th century. This research clarifies the role of the different family members – making up for several wrong assumptions by the local historiography – and solves specific problems of attribution, as well as giving important insight of the artists’ activity and some previously unknown works. Among the most significant contributions: the reconstruction of a nucleus of works by Giacomo Scotti, the discovery of new clues on the activity of Giovanni Pietro Scotti in Prague, Brescia and Turin, and of Giosuè Scotti in Bergamo, Milan and Bellagio, the finding of a previously unknown painting by Bartolomeo Scotti in Manerba del Garda, the redefinition of the corpus of works by Carlo Scotti with the addition of newly-discovered early paintings in Bovegno and Villa Carcina.