Books › A short account of a violin by Stradivari, dated 1690 : now in the possession of Messrs. W. E. Hill & sons, 1889 › scan 21
Scan 21
A short account of a violin by Stradivari, dated 1690 : now in the possession of Messrs. W. E. Hill & sons, 1889
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1he must have enjoyed for making a judicious transfer of instruments of which he no doubt had the use in his professional capacity, point to an uncharitable but simple explanation of the means by which this violin came into his hands. Certain it is that one of the two violins belonging to the Concerto is gone from the Court collection at Florence, which is well known to be incomplete.
3Although Mosell was undoubtedly aware of the exceptional value of the instrument, Mr. Ker, the purchaser, appears to have had no interest in violins beyond that of a collector of artistic rarities; but, according to his own account, given to members of his family, he bought this one by the advice of no less a person than Angelica Kauffmann, to whom he was at that time sitting for his portrait (probably at Rome, where she was then living with her second husband, Zucchi). He brought it home to Ireland and put it away in some obscure place of safety in one of his houses in that kingdom (locally known as "Glory Holes") where it remained perdu for more than fifty years, uncared for by his successor in the property, who was engrossed in the absorbing pursuit of book-collecting, although diligently searched for in several houses by other members of the family. The violin no doubt owes its wonderful preservation to this musical indifference on the part of its new owners, for, as a well-known musical writer, the Revd. H. R. Haweis, has said—"it is the collector who keeps them for years unstrung, and the violinists who lay them by, and neither play upon them nor lend them about, who are the real benefactors and conservers of the Cremona gems."
5In the year 1847 Mr. Richard Ker, a grandson of the
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