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Scan 64
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 50. See the scan on archive.org.
1uncertainty which crept into the early records of fiddle makers, some change of the family names may have taken place. Catherine Stradivari, however, never occupied herself with violin making. She died, unmarried, in 1748.
3The great Joseph Antonius Guarnerius, called "del Jesu" from the circumstance of a cross and the letters "I.H.S." being found in almost all his tickets (see Fig. 5), was born in Cremona, on the 8th June, 1683, and baptised on the 11th of the same month in the church of San Donato, a sort of chapel-of-ease—as we should perhaps call it—of the cathedral of Cremona.
5Joseph Guarnerius fecit Cremonæ anno 17 IHS
7FIG. 5. TICKET OF JOSEPH (ANTONIUS) GUARNERIUS ("DEL JESU").
9He was the son of John Baptist Guarneri and Angela Maria Locadella. His father was a son of Andrew Guarnerius, but was not a violin maker—at least, no violins bearing his name have been found. His relationship to Andrew has been ascertained from the fact that some of the great artist's tickets contain the words "Andreæ nepos." It was for a long time an accepted conclusion that Joseph del Jesu was a pupil of the still greater Antonio Stradivari, but a more intimate acquaintance with his early violins has somewhat unsettled that opinion. Like those belonging to a similar period of Stradivari himself, Joseph's early works, displaying few marks of what is called origi-
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