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Scan 86
The Hawley Collection of violins, 1904
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 52. See the scan on archive.org.
1itable gems. It was the birthplace of Alessandro Bonvincino, 1498-1555, and the home of his pupil, Gio. Battista Maroni, one of the most celebrated portrait-painters of the Renaissance. Cremona was a school unto herself in the field of art. No inconsiderable part of the income of Middle Age artists was the murage they derived from the church. The time of the birth of the violin was also a time of intense activity in literature, painting and sculpture, not alone in Italy, but throughout all Europe, the awakening as it were from the lethargy of the Dark Ages. This period has been well styled the Renaissance. No age before or since has been productive of so many epoch-making names. The veil that encompassed the horizon of Europe was lifted when that intrepid son of Genoa, Christopher Columbus, found a new world, and that daring soldier and navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, circumnavigated the globe. The voyages of other Genoese, John Cabot and his sons, and the Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, awakened Europe and caused new blood to course riotously through its ancient, corded veins. The advent of Shakespeare, Bacon, Jen- son, and Keppler added new force to the rising tide; and with the birth of printing, the invention of gunpowder and the compass, new possibilities were added to human existence. The same influence which was to support Titian, Cellini, Raphael, and Michael Angelo—the church—was also to nourish the new-born branch of the liutaro's art, that of the building of violins. And how soon was this violin destined to render obsolete the lute, viol, viola da gamba, and viola da braccio, the favored instruments of the Middle Ages! Palestrina, in the Vatican at Rome, was infusing new life and form into the music of the church. His influence was soon to be felt throughout the North, and in every community which boasted a cathedral or church edifice throughout the world. New demands were now made on the singers and likewise on the accompanying instruments, whose part up to this time had been simply to play in unison with the voice. Necessity, then as now the mother of invention, brought into being an instrument with the innovation of a rounded or convex back, like the belly, which was found to produce a wonderfully increased tone. This new claimant was first known as the Violino Piccolo, or little tenor, because smaller than the viol. From the first it filled the need of a stronger and brighter tone-coloring, and of an instrument more conveniently handled than the lutes, geiges, and rebeccs, previously in use. It will be seen, therefore, that the violin was not an invention, but an evolution from the older forms of bow instruments.
3In the first quarter of the sixteenth century occurred the birth of Gasparo de Bertolotti, in the little town of Salò, situated but a short distance from Brescia on the romantic Lago di Garda. It was to be through young Bertolotti, known as Gasparo da Salò, that the violin was to be brought into being and given the form in which we have it to-day, for his was the hand that made the first models. It is interesting to note here that the claim so long made by many earlier writers and heralded throughout the world by newspapers that Gaspard Duiffoprugcar was the first maker, has finally been exploded completely by the discovery that all the so-called Duiffoprugcars are imitations of Vuillaume, of Paris, 1830-50, and other French makers of the same period, and that Gaspar de Bertolotti holds the honor of having been the first maker. Violins there may have been prior to 1540, but the first of which there is record appeared about that time and bear his name. Early in Gasparo's life, the family Bertolotti removed to Brescia, where, no doubt, young Gasparo was ap-
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