Scan 129
Joseph Guarnerius, his work and his master [Andreas Gisalberti], 1906
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 81. See the scan on archive.org.
1fore advantageous to himself. We may thus argue that at Bozzolo, violins of a moderate rise in the arching were mostly preferred, and that in his modelling he conformed to the tastes or fancies of the people in the locality.
3His patrons seem, however, to have been quite content with his quaint management of the outline, this varying, but still being unopposed in style to those associated with his name, although made at other places.
5In those of the Bozzolo period the border is broad, the purfling not so massive: he may have had some slight leanings towards a possible delicacy of treatment in this matter of detail; it is not evenly inserted, varying in thickness at parts; now and then, as one looks round, there is a portion executed with a neatness unsurpassable, followed by a part showing uncertainty or even a tendency to ruggedness. Gisalberti was certainly not gifted with the steady iron-nerve-like capacity of Stradivari in this direction. Two more opposite men in mental constitution could not perhaps possibly be.
7Gisalberti's pupil, Joseph Guarnerius, with all his variation in mode and humour of working, seems never to have looked upon the even, firm, determined line of Stradivari with much admiration; it is very seldom indeed that his work in all details can be placed in fair comparison with, or likened to, that of the very conservative master.
9In common with almost all the foremost members of the Italian fraternity of liutaros, Gisalberti constantly varied his pattern or outline, possibly according to the humour of the moment. We thus find that with him, notwithstanding a determined quaintness of manner natural to him, and from which he seems never to have tried to sever himself, he yet found it possible to give variety, without which he would have proved himself deficient in one of the great essentials of Italian art, and one of the most prominent characteristics of each of the great masters.
11These Bozzolo violins have all the other peculiarities of Gisalberti present, if we except that of the posing of
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