Scan 54
Antonio Stradivari, his life and work (1644-1737), 1909
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 30. See the scan on archive.org.
1Stradivari had quitted the workshop of his master, for having labels of his own simply shows that he was both competent and free to make instruments on his own account if commissions were forthcoming. That he did not do so to any extent is certain, for singularly few of these early productions are to be met with. Various reasons might be given to account for this, but we are of opinion that by far the most probable explanation is that Amati practically retained the services of his gifted pupil until within a short time of his death, which took place, at the age of eighty-eight, in the year 1684. Such an assumption is the more reasonable when we bear in mind the resources of an establishment of reputation so high and merited as that of Nicolò Amati, a reputation acquired during the course of a whole century. Such a house, therefore, would be favoured with most of the orders for fine instruments sent to Cremona in preference to that of a new maker whose name was possibly still unknown outside the walls of his native city. Thus in all ways it probably suited Stradivari to remain as a paid workman under the roof of Nicolò Amati until about 1684.
3Careful observation, carried on during many years, has conclusively convinced us that very few of the later-dated instruments of Nicolò Amati—i.e. after 1665-70—are the work of an old man, and it must be remembered that he was seventy-four in the last-named year. Clearly, then, he was assisted by others; and without doubt these assistants were his pupils, amongst whom we may mention Andrea Guarneri, Giovanni Battista Rogeri, Francesco Ruger, Amati's own son Hieronymus, and, lastly, Stradivari.
5Here, then, was the school in which Cremona's greatest fiddle-making son passed the first three decades of his working life, profiting by the guidance and mature counsels of the master who had maintained, and added to, the repu-
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