Scan 438
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 346. See the scan on archive.org.
1The virtuosity of Count Cozio was of this character. His love for Cremonese instruments was neither whimsical nor transient. From the time when he secured the contents of the shop of Stradivari, to the end of his life—a period of about fifty years—he appears to have exerted himself to obtain as much information as possible relative to the art, and to collect masterpieces that they might in some measure be the means of recovering a lost art. When in the year 1775 he secured ten instruments out of ninety-one which Stradivari left in his shop at the time of his death, he must surely have considered himself singularly fortunate, and the happiest of collectors.* That such good fortune prompted him to make fresh overtures of purchase cannot be wondered at. We learn from the correspondence of Paolo Stradivari, that the Count had caused two letters to be sent by the firm of Anselmi di Briati to Paolo enquiring if he was willing to part with the tools and patterns used by his father Antonio, and that Paolo replied on May 4th, 1776, "I have already told you that I have no objection to sell all those patterns, measures, and tools which I happen to have in my possession, provided that they do not remain in Cremona, and
3* These instruments and the tools appear to have been in the possession of Paolo from the year 1743, when Francesco died, and Paolo opened the shop in the Piazza S. Domenico, as a cloth warehouse. He therefore seems to have only decided to dispose of his father's tools when he was in a feeble state of health, he having died as already noticed, before the purchase was settled, aged 68.
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