Scan 122
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 68. See the scan on archive.org.
1At last despair has succeeded to all that energetic study, and the varnish of Cremona is sullenly given up as a lost art."
3Declining, therefore, all speculation as to what the varnish is or what it is not, or any nostrums for its re-discovery, we will pass on at once to the description of the different Italian varnishes, which may be divided into four distinct classes, viz., the Brescian, Cremonese, Neapolitan, and Venetian. These varnishes are quite separable in one particular, which is, the depth of their colouring; and yet three of them, the Brescian, Cremonese, and Venetian, have, to all appearance, a common basis. This agreement may be accounted for with some show of reason by the supposition that there must have been a dépôt in each city where the varnish was sold in an incomplete form, and that the depth of colour used, or even the means adopted for colouring rested with the maker of the instrument. If we examine the Brescian varnish we find an almost complete resemblance between the material of Gaspar da Salò and that of his coadjutors, the colouring only being different. Upon turning to the Cremonese, we find that Guarneri, Stradivari, Carlo Bergonzi, and a few others, used varnish having the same characteristics, but, again, different in shade; possibly the method of laying it upon the instrument was peculiar to each maker. Similar facts are observable in the Venetian specimens. The varnish of Naples, again, is of a totally different composition, and as it was chiefly
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.