Scan 52
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1SECOND LETTER.
3August 24th, 1872.
5GIO PAOLO MAGGINI is represented at the Kensington Museum by an excellent violin, No. 111, very fine in workmanship and varnish, but as to the model a trifle too much hollowed at the sides, and so a little inferior to some of his violins, and to the violin No. 70, the model of which, like many of the Brescian school, is simple and perfect. (Model, as applied to a violin, is a term quite distinct from outline.) In No. 70 both belly and back are modelled with the simplicity of genius, by even gradation, from a centre, which is the highest part, down to all the borders of the instrument. The world has come back to this primitive model after trying a score, and prejudice gives the whole credit to Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona. As to the date of No. 70, the neatness and, above all, the slimness of the sound-hole. mark, I think, a period slightly posterior to Gasparo da Salo. This slim sound-hole is an advance, not a retrogression. The gaping sound-holes of Gasparo da Salo and Maggini were their one great error. They were not only ugly; they lessened the ring by allowing the vibration to escape from the cavity too quickly. No. 60, assigned to Duifffoprugcar and a fabulous antiquity, was made by some 'prentice hand in the seventeenth century: but No. 70 would adorn any collection, being an old masterpiece of Brescia and Bologna.
7THE SCHOOL OF CREMONA.—Andreas Amatus was more than thirty years old, and an accomplished maker of the older viole, when the violin was invented in Brescia or Bologna. He does not appear to have troubled his head with the new instrument for some years; one proof more that new they were. They would not at first materially influence his established trade; the old and new family ran side by side. Indeed it took the violin tribe two centuries to drive out the viola da gamba. However, in due course, Andreas Amatus set to work on violins. He learned from the Brescian school the only things they could teach a workman so superior—viz. the four corners and the sound-hole. This Brescian sound-hole stuck to him all his days; but what he had learned in his original art remained by him too. The collection contains three specimens of his handiwork: Violin 202, Mrs. Jay's violin—with the modern head—erroneously assigned to Antonius and Hieronymus; and violoncello No. 183. There are also traces of his hand in the fine tenor 139. In the three instruments just named the purfling is composed in best proportions, so that the white comes out with vigor; it is then inlaid with great neatness. The violoncello is the gem. Its outline is grace itself: the four exquisite curves coincide in one pure and serpentine design. This bass is a violin souffle; were it shown at a distance it would take the appearance of a most elegant violin; the best basses of Stradiuarius alone will stand this test. (Apply it to the Venetian masterpiece in the same case.) The scroll is perfect in design and chiseled as by a sculptor; the purfling is quite as fine as Stradiuarius; it is violin purfling,
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.