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 30
Scan 30
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.
1Fine size, reasonable outline, flat and even model, good wood, work, and varnish, and an indescribable air of grandeur and importance. He is quite as rare as Joseph Guarnerius. Twenty-five years ago I ransacked Europe for him—for he is a maker I always loved—and I could obtain but few. No. 109 was one of them, and the most remarkable, take it altogether. In this one case he has really set himself to copy Stradiuarius. He has composed his purfling in the same proportions, which was not at all his habit. He has copied the sound-hole closely, and has even imitated that great man's freak of delicately hollowing out the lower wood-work of the sound-hole. The varnish of this violin is as fine in colour as any pale Stradiuarius in the world, and far superior in body to most of them; but that is merely owing to its rare preservation. Most of these pale Stradiuariuses, and especially Mrs. Jay's and No. 86, had once varnish on them as beautiful as is now on this chef-d'œuvre of Carlo Bergonzi.
3Monsieur Fétis having described Michel Angelo Bergonzi as a pupil of Stradiuarius, and English writers having blindly followed him, this seems a fit place to correct that error. Michel Angelo Bergonzi was the son of Carlo; began to work after the death of Stradiuarius, and imitated nobody but his father—and him vilely. His corners are not corners, but peaks. See them once, you never forget them; but you pray Heaven you may never see them again. His tickets runs, "Michel Angelo Bergonzi figlio di Carlo, fece nel Cremona," from 1750 to 1780. Of Nicholas, son of Michel Angelo, I have a ticket dated 1796, but he doubtless began before that and worked till 1830. He lived till 1838, was well known to Tarisio, and it is from him alone we have learned the house Stradiuarius lived in. There is a tenor by Michel Angelo Bergonzi to be seen at Mr. Cox, the picture dealer, Pall-mall, and one by Nicholas, in Mr. Chanot's shop, in Wardour-street. Neither of these Bergonzi knew how their own progenitor varnished any more than my housemaid does.
5Stainer, a mixed maker. He went to Cremona too late to unlearn his German style, but he moderated it, and does not scoop so badly as his successors. The model of his tenor, especially the back, is very fine. The peculiar defect of it is that it is purfled too near the border, which always gives meanness. This is the more unfortunate, that really he was
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