Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 23
Scan 23
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
9 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1curious, as there exists a fine (supposed) portrait of Duiffoprugcar, executed by the engraver Pierre Wœiriot, who dwelt in Lyons, and who etched the likeness—if it is one—in 1562, with an inscription upon it intimating that the subject was represented as at the age of forty-eight years. It does not, of course, mean that he was forty-eight in the year 1562. The portrait is, indeed, shrewdly suspected to be posthumous; for supposing Duiffoprugcar to have been twenty-five when he went to Paris in 1515, and to have been alive when the portrait was published, he would have been seventy-two years of age. It is supposed to have been copied from a fine violoncello by Gaspar, on the back of which the same figure appears accompanied by the legend—
3Viva fui in sylvis; sum
4Dura occisa securi.
5Dum vixi, tacui; mortua
6Dulce cano.
8I am inclined to think, however, that this design, which is similar to one referred to further on, and attributed to Bandinelli, has been so attributed because of the striking resemblance which the figure bears to the portrait of that artist himself, and, if I am correct in this conjecture, the fidelity of Pierre Wœiriot's likeness of Duiffoprugcar may well be questioned. This Baccio Bandinelli was a sculptor, who died while in the service of Duke Cosmo, of Medici, in Florence, in the year 1559. If we may trust Vasari, he was a somewhat unscrupulous artist, and if, on the other hand, we place reliance on the evidence of his great opponent, Cellini, he was an utterly abominable and calumniating
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