Ottavio Bertotti was born in Vicenza in 1719, the son of a modest barber of the city and therefore very far from wealth and nobility. But as a boy he met the noble Marquis Capra who took a liking to the lively, curious and attentive young boy. He was then helped to study and successfully attended city schools.
At the time, there was a testamentary legacy in Vicenza from the great architect Vincenzo Scamozzi who allocated a kind of scholarship to a poor but studious and deserving young citizen; The beneficiary was bound to accept a second surname, precisely Scamozzi. For his scholastic merits and for the help of the Marquis Capra, the young Ottavio was chosen and completed his studies of architecture. The amount assigned was not high and Ottavio accepted various positions in the Municipality; he was the custodian of the Olympic Theater all his life with the official title of Theater Janitor. Naturally, he also carried out important architectural projects such as Palazzo Folco in Pusterla, S. Faustino, Palazzo Muzzi in Piazza Matteotti, the prospect of the Eretenio, Villa Capra in Sarcedo.
It turns out that he made a single stay outside the city, in Piedmont for the project of a building in Casale Monferrato. He led a quiet life as an architecture scholar, always deepening the examination of what was his idol and model of him: Andrea Palladio. In 1761 he published an agile book: "The Instructed Forestiere of the rarest things in architecture and painting in Vicenza" which was widely disseminated. From 1776 to 1783 he published the most complete treatise on Palladio: “Factories and drawings of A. Palladio“ in 4 volumes accompanied by many tables, complete with very accurate measurements and reliefs. He was the first in a systematic way to highlight the differences between the Palladian drawings of the FOUR BOOKS and the buildings created, giving reasons for their technical and historical causes. In 1786 he was able to guide the great German scholar Goethe to visit Vicenza; he defined Ottavio “a talented and passionate artist, with whom he would have gladly stopped for a month for a quick course in architecture“. He died in 1790. Fabio Gasparini
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