Scan 137
Joseph Guarnerius, his work and his master [Andreas Gisalberti], 1906
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 89. See the scan on archive.org.
1tance. Exquisite form therefore must be left out of the category of necessary attributes of a fine violin if he is to be permitted to contend for the pride of place.
3Fine form and beauty in detail being placed aside as unnecessary adjuncts in completing the work upon which he set out, he seems to have trusted, as regards workmanship, to what is known among connoisseurs everywhere as "character," a term synonymous with sufficiently marked individuality of manner in both designing and constructing. In this direction he was very powerful, and by some people might be thought to have been so much so as to be on the verge of offensiveness, but to this point very few would be bold enough to say he ever reached. He kept steadily orthodox in his retention and strict observance of the proportion of the various details to the whole, and which was firstly demonstrated in the works of the great master of Brescia, Gasparo da Salo, and held by his pupils, and followed as a sort of canon to be always held in respect and obedience.
5Next, in the matter of varnishing, he can not only hold his own well, but demands recognition as a master who had been thoroughly initiated into the secrets of the envelopment of his work with what we may term those mysterious ingredients of the wonderful varnishes of his day, known to us moderns as "the old Italian varnish," which is a wrong term, as there was as much variety in the qualities of the beautiful coverings of the old Italian instruments as there is in the styles of the works themselves. Gisalberti's varnish is of a distinct type, and from his use of apparently the same essence, fusion, or whatever its component parts consisted of, he either carried with him from place to place the raw materials, or they were obtained by him where he sojourned, and made up—possibly in secret—at convenient places and times.
7His varnish varying in depth of colour or intensity, is some evidence of his ability, had he called upon it, to produce some of the more showy effects obtained by other masters of the Venetian, Cremonese and Milanese
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