Scan 433
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 359. See the scan on archive.org.
1Cozio di Salabue takes precedence of all others. He was born about the time when the art of Italian Violin-making began to show signs of decadence, and having cultivated a taste for Cremonese instruments, he resolved to gratify his passion by bringing together a collection of Violins which should be representative of the work and character of each maker, and serve as models to those seeking to tread the path of the makers who made Cremona eminent as a seat of Violin manufacture. Virtuosity emanating from a spirit of beneficence is somewhat rare. When, however, utility occupies a prominent place in the thoughts of the virtuoso, he becomes a benefactor. The 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.1 That
31 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
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