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Scan 83
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 69. See the scan on archive.org.
1terms with those concerned, and departed at once for Milan, in which town was a small hotel where Tarisio used to stay. In a little room here he found, piled up in the greatest confusion, 244 violins, violas, and violoncellos, all being "old masters," and, after examining them, he agreed with the heirs of Tarisio, and purchased the 250 for a sum of £3166. This Tarisio, who could neither read nor write, had applied all his faculties to the study of old violins, and died worth about £12,000, which, with the produce of the 250 instruments above referred to, was the net result of his thirty years' traffic. The details regarding these violins of Tarisio were published about six years ago, with the sanction of the late M. Vuillaume. The reader can readily estimate the handsome profit derived by the latter from this transaction, when he realises that the new Stradivari above referred to, and which, I believe, is at present in the possession of M. Alard, would probably itself bring nearly the sum paid for the entire collection, were its owner willing to part with it at all. I shall have occasion to refer to this violin again.
3The early violins of Stradivari are, from their general resemblance to those of Nicolas Amati, called "Amati-Strads;" but about the end of the seventeenth century, when Stradivari was between fifty and sixty years of age, those ameliorations of the general form which ultimately became fixed in what is called his "grand period" are visible. He appears, as already said, to have devoted a number of years to the gradual perfection of his model, which resulted in the more permanent adoption of the pattern characterising all his work from that time down to about 1725. These violins are
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