Books › The Salabue Stradivari. A history and critical description of the famous violin, commonly called "le Messie." Containing many particulars obtained from authentic sources and now published for the first time, 1891 › scan 29
Scan 29
The Salabue Stradivari. A history and critical description of the famous violin, commonly called "le Messie." Containing many particulars obtained from authentic sources and now published for the first time, 1891
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1belly the following inscription, which affords valuable corroborative evidence of the authenticity of the record already given.
3Le Messi
5The bass bar which Vuillaume then fitted was not strong enough, and allowed after a time a slight depression of the belly, necessitating the renewal above referred to. Excepting for the change of bar, everything inside is as Stradivari left it. The blocks and linings, considered in relation to the thicknesses, are a model of consistency, neither heavy nor flimsy, made of the lightest and toughest wood we know, and all finished with the gouge and knife alone. Stradivari evidently disdained the superficial finish given by modern copyists to their interior work by the free use of glass paper.
7The thicknesses of belly and back, a point on which Stradivari appears to have made numerous experiments, are of his stoutest.
9The whiteness of the label, and the variance of the instrument in some features from the characteristic style of that period of Stradivari's work, have given rise on different occasions to the supposition that the label was not genuine, and that the violin was of a later date;
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