Scan 209
Antonio Stradivari, his life and work (1644-1737), 1909
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 185. See the scan on archive.org.
1OIL VARNISH GRADUALLY ABANDONED
3litions desired by instrument-makers, enabling them to varnish their works more speedily, and, above all, ensuring quick drying. That drying was at times tedious and troublesome, even under the favourable conditions of the Italian climate, is shown by the testimony of Stradivari himself. In one of the only two letters of the master known to exist, he apologises for delay about his work, because of the non-drying of the varnish. Very instructive is a letter written from Cremona in 1638, wherein we read, "The violin cannot be brought to perfection without the strong heat of the sun."* With Stradivari's death, the decay of the higher standard of instrument-making rapidly set in. Very probably the waning prosperity of the Church in Italy, coupled with the large number of fine instruments then existing, was the principal cause. Consequently circumstances favoured the use of varnishes which could be cheaply, and therefore quickly, put on. The spirit of artistic emulation which existed in Cremona in Stradivari's youth had died out. The two workmen, sons of the master, evidently enriched by their father's death, were content to rest; while Carlo Bergonzi and Joseph Guarnerius, though the only serious workers left, gave but few signs of industry. Elsewhere the craft was still actively carried on, notably at Milan and Naples; but works cheaply produced, rather than those of finished workmanship and fine varnish, seem to have been what the age required throughout Italy. The demand, therefore, for slower-drying varnish no longer existed; to use it meant extra cost, and its supreme importance passed either unnoticed or unheeded. To these causes, therefore, and to them alone, do we attribute the gradual disuse of the old varnish, and the final disappearance of the recipes for its concoction and for applying it employed by the
5* See fourth letter of the Galileo correspondence, Chapter XI.
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