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Scan 31
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
6 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 17. See the scan on archive.org.
1by him when he was about nineteen years of age, viz., in 1502 or 1503, is another indication, to my mind, of the influence which pictorial art has exercised upon the externals of violin development. Great artists do not readily imperil the harmony of their own conceptions by the introduction of an incongruity, simply because it exists in something which they desire to utilise. I, therefore, think that the harmonious f form of the sound holes is more likely to have been originated by these pictorial modifications of its uglier predecessor than that artists simply painted with what, in such a case, would be unnecessary and undesirable faithfulness. In an old line-engraving which I possess of Domenichino's St. Cecilia, now in the Louvre, and which was painted, probably, about 1610, the sound holes of the saint's violoncello are beautifully long, and terminate in a sort of fish tail. Fortunately this form was not adopted extensively, if at all, but it goes to show that the opinion I advance on this point is not devoid of plausibility.
3To the early makers is to be added another new name—Johannes Andreas, of Verona, a viola by whom, bearing date 1511, Dr. Schebek recently discovered at Vienna; but it is described as being too grotesque to admit of its author being classed as a professional maker.
5With the exception of some lute makers—such as Laux Maler, Bavaria, about 1540; Jean Kohl, Munich, 1580; Mensiedler and the Gerles, of Nuremberg, about 1540; and others of the same craft elsewhere, the foregoing are all the names of string-instrument makers which appear in the various sources of information
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