Born in Castelnuovo Fogliani in 1927, Renato Scrollavezza began making musical instruments at a young age, driven by his juvenile passion for the violin sound; he continued as a self-taught maker for about seven years until 1951, when he enrolled in the Cremona International School of violin making, with Peter Tatar as a teacher, obtaining his diploma in 1955. After having moved to Parma, he came into contact with the then elderly maestro Gaetano Sgarabotto, and often visited other great luthiers of the previous generation, in particular Giuseppe Ornati and Ferdinando Garimberti, whose style exerted a lasting influence on his taste.
Starting from the 1960s, Scrollavezza gradually established himself as one of the leading Italian luthiers of the second half of the twentieth century. After having received several prizes in national and international competitions, Scrollavezza was called to hold the chair of violin making established in 1975 at the A. Boito Conservatory in Parma. Between 1988 and 2000 he also held the position of curator of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù's "Cannone" in Genova. From the beginning of the 1980s Scrollavezza devoted himself mainly to teaching and his personal research, culminated in the making of his Orchestra da Camera, composed of eleven instruments, inaugurated by "I Musici" in 1985 and exhibited at the Casa del Suono in Parma. His other works in public collections are, alongside the instruments owned by the Italian Conservatories, the 1956 cello awarded and exhibited at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the instruments of the Castello della Musica in Noceto, that hosts the Parma school of violin making, and the 1958 inlaid violin dedicated to Antonio Stradivari and donated to the Museo del Violino in Cremona.
