Books › Le luthier de Crémone et Le trésor, 1920 › scan 13
Scan 13
Le luthier de Crémone et Le trésor, 1920
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Introduction
3he has never lost the languorous coquetry, facile suavity, and fleeting grace of Les Intimités, he interpenetrated these qualities in Les Humbles with the beauty of a stern simplicity. There, as in The Lutemaker and The Treasure, he is the poet of democracy, of poverty and of self-denial, of quiet domestic joys, of the altar and the fireside. And if occasionally, though not here, we catch a note of the Pan-pipe, or a glimpse of the satyr's foot, it is only because this, too, is a part of the common life of Paris which Coppée has studied with such attentive sympathy.
5The Lutemaker and The Treasure represent Coppée at his best in their happy blending of poetic imagination in conception with naturalistic observation in execution. The former takes us to Cremona, long famous for its violins, in the making of which the family of Amati had been pre-eminent for many generations (1550-1692). We are told here that their success was due in part to a wonderful varnish, of which their successors had long lost the secret, when the hunchbacked Filippo rediscovered it, and so was able to make a violin of softer and sweeter tone than any of his rivals. Now Filippo loved his master's daughter Giannina, and the father, wrapped in his art, had promised her as bride to him who should win the prize in a competition of their guild. But Giannina regarded the hunchback with pitying repulsion, and returned the love of the handsome but less
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