Scan 62
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
9 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1STAINER, a mixed maker. He went to Cremona too late to unlearn his German style, but he moderated it, and does not scoop so badly as his successors. The model of his tenor, especially the back, is very fine. The peculiar defect of it is that it is purfled too near the border, which always gives meanness. This is the more unfortunate, that really he was freer from this defect than his imitators. He learned to varnish in Cremona, but his varnish is generally paler than the native Cremonese. This tenor is exceptional; it has a rose-coloured varnish that nothing can surpass. It is lovely.
3SANCTUS SERAPHIN.—This is a true Venetian maker. The Venetian born was always a half-Cremonese, half-German. In this bass, which is his uniform style, you see a complete mastery of the knife and the guage. Neither the Stradivarius nor the Amati ever purfled a bass more finely, and, to tell the truth, rarely so finely. But oh! the miserable scroll, the abominable sound-hole! Here he shows the cloven foot, and is more German than Stainer. Uniformity was never carried so far as by this natty workman; one violin exactly like the next; one base the image of its predecessor. His varnish never varies. It is always slightly opaque. This is observed in his violins, but it escapes detection in his bases, because it is but slight, after all, and the wonderful wood he put into his bases, shines through that slight defect and hides it from all but practised eyes. He had purchased a tree or a very large log of it; for this is the third bass I have seen of this wonderful wood. Now-a-days you might cut down a forest of sycamore and not match it; those veteran trees are all gone. He has a feature all to himself; his violins have his initials in ebony let into the belly under the broad part of the tail-piece. This natty Venetian is the only old violin maker I know who could write well. The others bungle that part of the date they are obliged to write in the tickets. This one writes it in a hand like copper plate, whence I suspect he was himself the engraver of his ticket, which is unique. It is four times the size of a Cremonese ticket, and has a scroll border composed thus:—The sides of the parallelogram are created by four solid lines like sound-holes; these are united at the sides by two leaves and at the centre by two shells. Another serpentine line is then coiled all round them at short intervals, and within the parallelogram the ticket is printed:—
5Sanctus Seraphin Utinensis,
6Fecit Venetiis, anno 17—.
8THE MIGHTY VENETIAN.—I come now to a truly remarkable piece, a basso di camera that comes modestly into the room without a name, yet there is nothing except No. 91 that sends such a thrill through the true connoisseur. The outline is grotesque but original, the model full and swelling but not bumpy, the wood detestable; the back is hare-wood, but without a vestige of figure; so it might just as well be elm: the belly instead of being made of mountain deal grown on the sunny side of the Alps, is a piece of house timber. Now these materials would kill any other maker; yet this mighty bass stands its ground. Observe the fibre of the belly; here is the deepest red varnish in the room, and laid on with an enormous brush. Can you see the fibre through the thin varnish of Sanctus Seraphin as plainly as you can see the fibre through this varnish laid on as thick as paint? So much for clearness. Now for colour. Let the student stand before this bass, get the varnish into his mind, and then
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