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Scan 59
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
18 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 37. See the scan on archive.org.
1GIUSEPPE (JOSEPH) ANTONIO GUARNERI
3the culminating point in the artistic career of Joseph Guarneri del Gesù. He was in the zenith of his remarkable powers in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and he brought the technique of a lifetime to bear upon this instrument. It was the year of Stradivari's death, which occurred within a stone's throw of Joseph's house. For some time past, the struggle to see who could succeed to the position of the great master had been in progress. Carlo Bergonzi, whose workshop adjoined that of Stradivari, was in his prime, and he was straining every nerve to draw to himself the Stradivari patronage. It takes no great flight of fancy to see the mighty Joseph girding his loins for the contest and entering the arena with his unanswerable challenge to all comers, his King Joseph. Its back he formed of one piece of maple cut on the slab. It reveals a figure of surpassing beauty. The effect, heightened by the richness of the varnish, is to produce a picture in which one sees the beauties of a sunset at sea. The wondrous beauty of this back and sides has aroused the ardor of the wielders of bow and pen for the better part of a century. The belly, from the famous log already described from which Joseph derived the tops of so many famous instruments, has a very fine grain at the center, but broadens gradually toward the sides. The walls are of maple, quarter-sawed, so as to show to the best advantage every feature of their beautiful marking. The quality of the varnish is of the richest possible description and of a lustrous ripe-peach color, and the effect of the beautiful coating over the wavy undulating figure in the maple of the back and sides is as if Nature were in perfect harmony to produce her most ravishing lights and shades. The scroll is in the finest style of the maker, and the workmanship displayed is beyond any other known Guarneri instrument. In speaking of this period of the work of this maker, Mr. George Hart, in his standard work on violins, says, "In these culminate the most exquisite finish, a thoroughly artistic and original form, and the most handsome material." In some cases the luster of the wood of the back, set in its casing of deep amber, that unrivaled varnish, may be likened to the effect produced by the setting summer sun on cloud and wave. The reader may pardon the application to the glow of this covering of the loveliest description in the compass of the English language, which paints the heaven's colors as
5"Melted to one vast iris of the West,
6Where the day joins the past eternity.
7All its hues,
8From the rich sunset to the rising star,
9Their magical variety diffuse.
10And now they change; a paler shadow strews
11Its mantle o'er the mountains: Parting day
12Dies like the dolphin, who in each pang imbues
13With a new color as it gasps away,
14The last still loveliest,—'till—'tis gone,—and all is gray."
15BYRON.
17The effect of the beautiful corruscation upon the back of the violin is obtained by cutting the wood upon the cross, or, as the French term it, sur maille. In concluding our inadequate description of the appearance of the King Joseph, let us add the fact that Mr. Hart pronounced it to be "the most perfect and handsomest Guarneri in existence," and called it his King, by which appellation it has ever since been known.
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