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Scan 77
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
6 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 63. See the scan on archive.org.
1shortest and most harmless military trial which Cremona ever had, and I think it could profitably be left out of future biographies of this distinguished fiddle-maker, being a distorted historical fact, imported into the memoir of a man whose domestic or artistic career it does not illustrate in any one point.
3Some time before this memorable "siege," viz., on the 24th August, 1699, and fifteen months after his first wife's death, Stradivari was married again in the church of San Donato, the second bride being Antonia Zambelli, he being then fifty-five. His first wife was his senior by four years, and this second one his junior by twenty. By his second marriage he had five children, making eleven with the first family. Of this large number he buried six, as well as their mothers, prior to his own decease, the last wedded spouse having died nine months before his own eyes were sealed. He thus had his full share of grief, but notwithstanding his great affliction, he does not appear to have turned aside during his long life from the steady pursuit of his profession. He is supposed to have died on 17th or 18th Dec., 1737, as he was buried on the 19th of that month, according to an extract from the registers of Cremona Cathedral. He had prepared a tomb for himself and family in 1729; neither he nor they, however, were laid in it, but in a vault belonging to a Signor Francesco Vitani, in a chapel of the Rosary, in the parish of St. Matthew.
5The foregoing are all the particulars of the life of Stradivari which have, so far as I know, come down to us. One solitary personal reminiscence of him is given by Fetis, on the authority of a violinist named Polledro, who reported that his master knew Stradivari and loved
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