Emilio Motta

Emilio Motta (1855 - 1920) was a Swiss-born Italian historian. His interests were numerous: he worked on numismatics, heraldry, and statistics, and worked on bibliographies on various topics, including suicide, Ticino's agricultural and forestry policy, and Gotthard railway. His research focused on the archives of Italian Switzerland and Milan and Como.

Motta was born on 24 October 1855, in Bellinzona, Switzerland to Christopher and Matilde Balli. His father was a politician and his mother descended from a family of timber and cloth merchants in Germany and the Netherlands.

After his mother died in 1857 and his father in 1867, Motta lived with his maternal uncle Giacomo Balli, a lawyer and entrepreneur in Locarno, Switzerland.

He attended the Collegio Rosmini Di Stresa, in Stresa, Italy. He then attended the preparatory course of the Landriani College in Lugano, for a year, and then continued his education in Solothurn and Lugano. 

After completing his schooling, Motta time met Jakob Kaiser, Johann Rudolf Rahn, and Theodor von Liebenau, and learned self-taught history. In 1875, he became the editor of the student magazine La Palestra.

Motta was the author of many well-documented studies. He was a member of the Art History Society of Switzerland since 1877.
In 1879, he launched the magazine, "Bollettino Storico della Svizzera Italiana." The magazine was later edited by Eligio Pometta and Giuseppe Martinola. 
In 1889, he became a librarian of Trivulzio Library of Milan, Italy. In 1896 he received Italian citizenship (without renouncing Swiss), and in 1909, he became a member of the Ticino commission for the protection of historical and artistic monuments. 

Personal life
In 1888, Motta married Anna Mariano, daughter of an hotelier in Novara. 

Motta died due to illness, on 18 November 1920, in Roveredo, Graubünden, Switzerland.

Books