Scan 36
Cremona: an account of the Italian violin-makers and their instruments, 1894
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 14. See the scan on archive.org.
1PART V.
3THE OLD ITALIAN VARNISH.
5MENTION is now due to the Italian varnish. Here we stand before an unsolved enigma. For more than one hundred years this varnish has been lost, and all attempts to prepare a varnish which has its fire and substance have been in vain. (q) Varnish serves not only for ornament, but also as a preservative of the instrument against the effects of temperature, and for this purpose the varnish which the old masters used must have had peculiar qualities, for otherwise the old instruments, through the changes of dryness and damp, as much as by the vibration of playing, must have perished long ago.
7It is certain, however, that the material which the old masters had at their command, and which was accessible to all of them, is no longer in existence, for if differences in the varnish of their instruments are noticeable, there is a resemblance in them all, in the principal ingredients, and it varies only in colour and in the thickness or thinness of the application.
9One circumstance may be considered here.
11This fact has been proved, that until the middle of the last century a tree was cultivated in Northern Italy which supplied an exquisite balsam, the balsam fir, Pinus balsamea. This tree died from the extraction of its resin, and on account of its timber being worthless was not re-planted and re-cultivated: and perhaps with its disappearance the
13(q) Mr. Charles Reade states as his opinion that the secret of the genuine varnish had vanished in 1760: and it may be pointed out that the excellent varnish used by some more modern makers, such as Enrico Ceruti, will not for a moment bear comparison with that which dates from certain earlier periods—for instance, take that of De Comble.
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