Scan 438
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1accident. Imagine the paints and brushes, the pencils and palettes, the easel and the sketches of Raffaele having been given over to a Pò barge-master, and that chance had divulged his name. Would he not in these days of microscopic biography have furnished work for the genealogist, and been made the subject of numberless pictures? Hence it is that the admirers of Stradivari cannot fail to remember the name of honest Gobbi, who carried the chest wherein were the tools with which the Raffaele of Violin-making wrought the instruments which have served to render his memory immortal.
3Soon after the date of Paolo's last letter, he became seriously ill, dying on the 9th of October, 1776. The correspondence was then taken up by his son Antonio. He says in his letter dated November 21, 1776: "I shall send you the case with the patterns and tools of my late grandfather Antonio, which was packed and closed before my father was bedridden. You will find it well-arranged, with mark on it, and with red tape and seal as on the Violins already sent to you." He next refers to other patterns which he found locked up in a chest and which he believes were unknown or forgotten by his father, and offers to dispose of them, with a Viola, and concludes by promising to send the receipts, the copies of which show that the remnants of the tools and patterns were bought for three giliati.
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