Scan 201
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 141. See the scan on archive.org.
1regard a Mirecourt or Bavarian copy with as much favour as a genuine Cremona. Mace proceeds to instruct the "common eye." "First, know that an old Lute is better than a new one." Thus also with Viols: "We chiefly value old instruments before new; for by experience they are found to be far the best." "The pores of the wood have a more and free liberty to move, stir, or secretly vibrate, by which means the air—which is the life of all things, both animate and inanimate—has a more free and easie recourse to pass and repass." This explanation accounts, in part at least, for the superiority of old over new instruments, and in language delightfully quaint and simple.
3Mantegazza, Pietro Giovanni, Milan. Vincenzo Lancetti states that "about 1800 the Brothers Mantegazza were restorers of instruments, and were often entrusted by French and Italian artists to lengthen the necks of their Violins after the Paris fashion, an example which was followed by amateurs and professors all over North Italy." This extract shows that the short necks were dispensed with in Paris towards the close of the
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