Scan 130
Joseph Guarnerius, his work and his master [Andreas Gisalberti], 1906
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 82. See the scan on archive.org.
1the sound holes. These, which it will be observed are different on the Rimini and Parma specimens, are placed more in the manner usual among Cremonese makers of the time, that is, with what is known as some amount of flow, and not with the upper part leaning back towards the border. He did on rare occasions, possibly to please someone, incline them very much toward the centre, quite in a reverse manner to that on the majority of his designs.
3A few words on this point. The inclination of the upper portion of the sound holes outwardly or toward the border was not a singularly of Gisalberti; on the contrary, many of the Italian makers occasionally gave way to this freak of fancy. It is by no means certain, either, that the masters of the art, their patrons, looked upon the setting or posing of the sound holes of a violin from the same standpoint as we do now. At the present time connoisseurs are in the habit of looking upon a violin almost invariably in the same manner, it is taken up and looked at with the head upright; all parts receding from it and below are expected, in orthodox fashion, to get larger and bolder. This will do very well until a masterpiece turns up with this regularity of progressive form apparently set at defiance; the piece may be looked upon as an eccentricity and not as a classical model, in consequence of the breach of some unwritten law of which no person is cognisant at the present day, but which was probably in operation in the olden times.
5Every design must be judged by the beauty of line and harmony of proportion contained within itself.
7Critics of sound judgment will not place a violin in an inferior rank to that of one of the great masters because it has not been conceived or carried out in the same spirit.
9A maker of originality may fix upon a combination of form and proportion with a most happy result, quite different from, or even opposed to, the ideas assumed to be manifested in the works of the Raphael of violin construction. It is within the bounds of possibility to
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