Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 56
Scan 56
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
10 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLINS AT CREMONA
3rhapsodies about setting suns and the colours of the rainbow.
5Passing over a lesser Pietro, son of the lesser Giuseppe, son of Andrea, who worked at Mantua, we come to the one man who, with the exception of the great Nicolo, is worthy to measure swords (or bows) with Stradivari. He came, singularly enough, from a side branch, and not in direct descent from Andrea or any violin-maker, being the son of one John Baptist Guarnerius, and was born at Cremona in 1683.
7The father of the great Giuseppe was the son of one Bernardo Guarnerius, who was a cousin of Andrea, and therefore the great Joseph was nephew of Andrea Guarnerius, just as the great Nicolo was the nephew of Andrea Amati; but a distinguished fact separates our Giuseppe from all his illustrious kinsfolk, and it is this, that his father, Bernardo, does not seem to have been a violin-maker at all, so the young Giuseppe owed his teaching most probably to his uncle and cousins.
9Most writers have speculated blindly enough upon his distinctive appendage "del Gesù," some talking about the Jesuits or a supposed religious bent. This is one of the many cases where sapient antiquaries, in seeking for recondite origins, neglect the simplest facts and ignore the easiest explanations. What can be more simple than for the great Giuseppe, conscious of his superiority to Gianbattista, son of Andrea Guarneri, as well as anxious to distinguish himself from Gianbattista, his father, and coming after both, though preferred before them, should call himself the
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