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Scan 157
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
11 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 83. See the scan on archive.org.
1ANALYSIS OF WORK OF THE FOLLOWERS OF GREAT MASTERS
3The Venetian School
4Sanctus Serafino
6Sanctus Serafino is ranked by connoisseurs among the leading violin-makers of Italy, for in point of workmanship he carried his art to as high a plane as did the greatest masters of Cremona. He was born in Undine, a small town a few miles from Venice, in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It is not known to a certainty from whom he learned his art. The influence most potent in his work is that of Nicola Amati, whom he followed closely, and, judging from his instruments, there is much evidence of his having studied under that master or with one of his best pupils. Whether or not he was in any way associated with Stradivari is unknown, but it is certain that he profited by close association with the violins of the master. If one considers the marvelous results he attained as the sum of his own unaided efforts, then is he surely entitled to the highest praise. As a workman, he was equaled in his best work by very few. Such technical skill as he evinces is seen only in the work of the brothers and Nicola Amati, Stradivari, the choicest efforts of Joseph Guarneri, and the finest of Carlo Bergonzi. In point of varnish, he had few peers.
8In the use of the knife, he was hardly surpassed. His violins are mostly patterned after the style of Nicola Amati, although some follow the lines of Stradivari. In several of his earliest instruments, he seems to have been influenced by the great success of Jacob Stainer and to have copied Stainer's model in a few particulars. Sanctus Serafino, however, was not a mere copyist, except that he followed in a general way the lines of the great masters. His work is always beautifully finished. No one could fashion a more elegant scroll than is seen in his finest works, and he cut his sound holes with extraordinary deftness of hand. His purfling is most skillfully set in, and the edges of his instruments are finished with elegance, but without the perfection one is led to expect from study of the other features of his work. Speaking from a high standpoint, these are the weak features in his workmanship. He always employed wood of the choicest and most beautiful description. His backs are cut in a manner calculated to show to the best advantage the beauty of the figure of his wood. The material forming the bellies of his violins is always of magnificent acoustical quality, and of the greatest beauty. The tone sought by Sanctus Serafino was one of pure soprano quality, combined with power, solidity, and brilliancy. His instruments have much to remind one of the tone of the violins of Joseph Guarneri del Gesù, yet having an individuality of their own which is a distinguishing feature, and mark him as a master, inasmuch as they show him to have been more than a technician. His varnish was applied with great skill, and he gave to it a richness of color and texture which earned for him from the first the admiration of violin connoisseurs. It ranges in color from a lustrous red to orange yellow. Serafino was not a prolific workman. Comparatively few of his violins are to be met with, more's the pity. He employed a large copper plate label, and in addition sometimes branded his violins under the tail-piece.
10M. Ovid Musin, who was the pupil of the celebrated player Vieuxtemps, says that great virtuoso did his best work on a Sanctus Serafino violin. Caesar Tompson, the eminent Belgian violinist, also used a Sanctus Serafino for his concert work for
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