I «quattro Carli». Scuole pittoriche e geografia artistica tra Sei e Settecento

The essay tackles the late seventeenth-century origin, the variants and the eighteenth-century diffusion of the expression «i quattro Carli» («the four Carli»), with reference to Carlo Maratti, Carlo Cignani, Charles Le Brun and Carl Loth, presented as the local champions of the Baroque schools of painting respectively of Rome, Bologna, Paris and Venice. Quoted by Luigi Lanzi, the expression was used in its complete formulation (with four and not three Carli) for the first time in a letter of 1764 to Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, published without signature, but referable to Giampietro Zanotti.