Books › Cremona violins. Four letters descriptive of those exhibited in 1873 at the South Kensington museum. Also giving the data for producing the true varnishes used by the great Cremona makers, 1900 › scan 18
Scan 18
Cremona violins. Four letters descriptive of those exhibited in 1873 at the South Kensington museum. Also giving the data for producing the true varnishes used by the great Cremona makers, 1900
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1He learned from the Brescian school the only things they could teach a workman so superior—viz. the four corners and the sound-hole. This Brescian sound-hole stuck to him all his days; but what he had learned in his original art remained by him too. The collection contains three specimens of his handiwork: Violin 202, Mrs. Jay's violin—with the modern head—erroneously assigned to Antonius and Hieronymus; and violoncello No. 183. There are also traces of his hand in the fine tenor 139. In the three instruments just named the purfling is composed in best proportions, so that the white comes out with vigour; it is then inlaid with great neatness. The violoncello is the gem. Its outline is grace itself: the four exquisite curves coincide in one pure and serpentine design. This bass is a violin soufflé; were it shown at a distance it would take the appearance of a most elegant violin; the best basses of Stradiuarius alone will stand this test. (Apply it to the Venetian masterpiece in the same case.) The scroll is perfect in design and chiselled as by a sculptor; the purfling is quite as fine as Stradiuarius; it is violin purfling, yet this seems to add elegance without meanness. It is a masterpiece of Cremona all but the hideous sound-hole that alone connects this master with the Brescian school.
3His sons Antonius and Hieronymus soon cured themselves of that grotesque sound-hole, and created a great school. They chose better wood and made richer varnish, and did many beautiful things. Nevertheless, they infected Italian fiddle-making with a fatal error. They were the first scoopers. Having improved on Brescia in outline and details, they assumed too hastily that they could improve on her model. So they scooped out the wood about the sound-holes and all round, weakening the connection of the centre with the sides of the belly, and checking the fulness of the vibration. The German school carried this vice much further, but the Amati went too far, and inoculated a hundred fine makers with a wrong idea. It took Stradiuarius himself fifty-six years to get entirely clear of it.
5The brothers Amati are represented in this collection, first, by several tenors that once were noble things, but have been cut on the old system, which was downright wicked. It is cutting in the statutory sense, viz. cutting and maiming. These ruthless men just sawed a crescent off the top, and another off the bottom, and the result is a thing with the inner bought of a giant
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