Scan 53
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1yet this seems to add elegance without meanness. It is a masterpiece of Cremona all but the hideous sound-hole that alone connects this master with the Brescian school.
3His sons Antonius and Hieronymus soon cured themselves of that grotesque sound-hole, and created a great school. They chose better wood and made richer varnish, and did many beautiful things. Nevertheless, they infected Italian fiddle-making with a fatal error. They were the first scoopers. Having improved on Brescia in outline and detail, they assumed too hastily that they could improve on her model. So they scooped out the wood about the sound-holes and all round, weakening the connection of the centre with the sides of the belly, and checking the fullness of the vibration. The German school carried this vice much further, but the Amati went too far, and inoculated a hundred fine makers with a wrong idea. It took Stradiuarius himself fifty-six years to get entirely clear of it.
5The brothers Amati are represented in this collection, first, by several tenors that once were noble things, but have been cut on the old system, which was downright wicked. It is cutting in the statutory sense, viz. cutting and maiming. These ruthless men just sawed a crescent off the top, and another off the bottom, and the result is a thing with the inner bought of a giant and the upper and lower bought of a dwarf. If one of these noble instruments survives in England uncut, I implore the owner to spare it; to play on a £5 tenor, with the Amati set before him to look at while he plays. Luckily the scrolls remain to us; and let me draw attention to the scroll of 136. Look at the back of this scroll, and see how it is chiselled—the centre line in relief, how sharp, distinct, and fine; this line is obtained by chiselling out the wood on both sides with a single tool, which fiddle-makers call a gauge, and there is nothing but the eye to guide the hand.
7There are two excellent violins of this make in the collection—Mrs. Jay's, and the violin of Mr. C. J. Read, No. 75. This latter is the large pattern of those makers, and is more elegant than what is technically called the grand Amati, but not so striking. To appreciate the merit and the defect of this instrument, compare it candidly with the noble Stradiuarius Amatise that hangs by its side, numbered 82. Take a back view first. In outline they are much alike. In the details of work the Amati is rather superior; the border of the Stradiuarius is more exquisite; but the Amati scroll is better pointed and gauged more clearly, the purfling better composed for effect, and the way that purfling is let in, especially at the corners, is incomparable. On the front view you find the Amati violin is scooped out here and there, a defect the Stradiuarius has avoided. I prefer the Stradiuarius sound-hole per se; but, if you look at the curves of these two violins, you will observe that the Amati sound-holes are in strict harmony with the curves; and the whole thing the product of one original mind that saw its way.
9Nicholas Amatus, the son of Hieronymus, owes his distinct reputation to a single form called by connoisseurs the Grand Amati. This is a very large violin, with extravagantly long corners, extremely fine in all the details. I do not think it was much admired at the time. At all events, he made but few, and his copyists, with the exception of Francesco Rugger, rarely selected that form to imitate. But now-a-days these violins are almost worshipped, and, as the collection is incomplete without one, I hope some gentleman will kindly send
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