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 29
Scan 29
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.
1ends in a broad zigzag ribbon of varnish, and then comes the bare wood caused by the friction in playing, but higher up to the left a score of great bold chips. It is the very beau-ideal of the red Cremona violin, adorned, not injured, by a century's fair wear. No. 95 is a roughish specimen of the same epoch, not so brilliant, but with its own charm. Here the gauge-marks of impatience are to be seen in the very border, and I should have expected to see the stiff-throated scroll, for it belongs to this form.
3The next epoch is rougher still, and is generally, but not always, higher built, with a stiff-throated scroll, and a stiff, quaint sound-hole that is the delight of connoisseurs; and such is the force of genius that I believe in our secret hearts we love these impudent fiddles best—they are so full of chic. After that, he abuses the patience of his admirers; makes his fiddles of a preposterous height, with sound-holes long enough for a tenor; but, worst of all, indifferent wood and downright bad varnish—varnish worthy only of the Guadagnini tribe, and not laid on by the method of his contemporaries. Indeed, I sadly fear it was this great man who, by his ill example in 1740-45, killed the varnish of Cremona. Thus—to show the range of the subject—out of five distinct epochs in the work of this extraordinary man we have only one and a half, so to speak, represented even in this noble collection—the greatest by far the world has ever seen. But I hope to see all these gaps filled, and also to see in the collection a Stradiuarius violin of that kind I call the dolphin-backed. This is a mere matter of picturesque wear. When a red Stradiuarius violin is made of soft velvety wood, and the varnish is just half worn off the back in a rough triangular form, that produces a certain beauty of light and shade which is in my opinion the ne plus ultra. These violins are rare. I never had but two in my life. A very obliging dealer, who knows my views, has promised his co-operation, and I think England, which cuts at present rather too poor a figure in respect of this maker, will add a dolphin-backed Stradiuarius to the collection before it is dispersed.
5Carlo Bergonzi, if you go by gauging and purfling, is of course an inferior make to the Amati; but, if that is to be the line of reasoning, he is superior to Joseph Guarnerius. We ought to be in one story; if Joseph Guarnerius is the second maker of Cremona, it follows that Carlo Bergonzi is the third.
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